Divided Loyalty
by KnightGuardian
Summary: There comes a time for alliances to be severed and new ones born, for a man to choose the path of redemption, or that of eternal damnation. At last that time has come upon Gisbourne. Which path will he choose, that of the redeemer, or the destroyer?
1. Chapter 1

Author Disclaimer: I do not and never shall own BBC Robin Hood or the characters therin.

* * *

It was a fine autumn eve with a chill breeze sweeping the cool dampness of Nottingham castle

It was a fine autumn eve with a chill breeze sweeping the cool dampness of Nottingham castle. It had been peaceful for weeks, though Gisbourne knew that would not last.

It never did.

"Gisbourne!" the shrill shout had him out of his reclined chair, his half-drunk wine clattering against the oak table. Sometimes he detested being right, this was one of those time.

What was the sheriff on about now?

"My lord?"

"I've got him."

A disturbing understanding overtook Gisbourne at that moment, which bothered him more than the feeling itself.

He knew he should be smirking at least, it was what the sheriff expected he knew from the raised eyebrow he was getting for his prolonged silence, and so he did, though it felt like a poor mockery of his usual sneer feeling pasted and uncomfortable.

Where was his elation, his contentment?

He was as void of that now as Robin was of greed.

Blasted that damned man anyhow.

This should have been a good moment, as far as such things go leastwise.

A scant few months ago it would have been, the difference was made all the more notable by the churning in his gut.

He knew this day would come, what was worse was the little flare of hope he'd buried so deep he barely recognized it that had wished it wouldn't, but he'd presumed that when it did he'd be happy to see it come.

He wasn't. A damnable time to posses a conscious.

"_Possess…possess…damn, not so long ago I possessed Him. Gah! It was nothing! It meant nothing! I've tupped a score of lasses since"_ he didn't add the one young man he'd seduced into his bed to their number – the comparison was hardly worth recall.

After all it meant nothing that he'd had those same blue-blue eyes, and plain brown hair. Gisbourne had even conveniently forgotten that he'd found him in an archery field.

It hadn't been the same; this one had been to soft, to easy to bend over the hard wood of his desk…he could have been His twin, but he hadn't His spark, nor His passion.

Touching Him had been touching fire; just kissing Him had been a heady thrill.

"Well?" the sheriff was growing testy, not a good sign.

"Very good news my lord. How was Hood captured?" the sheriff brightened at this, regaling Gisbourne with his ingenious capture of the outlaw.

The sheriff smiled wickedly, "Oh, you'll find this amusing, though I doubt dear Robin will share our amusement!" he stated chuckling some more.

"Indeed" Gisbourne said school his face into polite interest, all the while his thoughts in turmoil, he needed more time, he couldn't face this now, not so soon…

_"If I haven't forgotten now, what difference would a day, a month, a year have made?"_

His emotions were too volatile, he needed to leave, but even more than that he needed to stay, he needed to know what had happened.

_"How could Loxley have been so bloody stupid?"_

How could he have been so stupid as to let the blasted outlaw under his skin, where he seemed to be lodged tight so that that to remove his mark Guy feared would require slicing out his own heart.

* * *

_A few hours prior:_

The cavernous falls with the adjoining lake were the perfect spot Robin mused, he was by no means shy but instead preferred the distance and white noise provided by the falls as he bathed, besides he'd rather not be caught with his breeches down, by Vaisy, Gisbourne, or anyone else.

Okay, perhaps Gisbourne not so much.

Not even his faithful Much would find him here, hidden as it was, it was exactly what he needed at the end of a week with as much dirt and grime on his as the floor. He'd spent all of the previous night picking twigs from his hair.

He was an outlaw, true, but that didn't mean he had anything against being clean – when one could afford the time for the luxury.

He'd be pushing John into the next stream they passed over, as he was beginning to smell rather rank…

Outlawry was rough living for all the ease it seemed to the passive observer, getting sweaty and hot on summer nights, freezing till limbs turned blue and numb with cold and the muggy wetness that left clothes sodden…Robin heaved a sigh, and She thought it was all fun and games.

It was, it _is_, that is...until someone dies.

Pushing aside all thought Robin stripped diving into the water smooth ripples broken into sparkling waves, he swam a few laps for the sheer joy of it, the water was chilled enough to numb his limbs pleasantly.

Breaking the surface he floated, letting himself just be, left to himself the mantle of leader rescinded for a spell and he was simply Robin.

Reflecting on that he wondered what might have been between him and Gisbourne if things had been different, would he still be the sheriffs' right hand?

Would that delicious friction that broke into a wild fire every time their eyes met, there hands brushed? Not that it mattered. Not that he actually cared. Much.

Idle curiosity, that was all it was.

He wasn't going to start making more of it than there was like a silly female. Even if Gisbourne had him pinned up against a tree with his legs wrapped around him, even if Gisbourne has plied his body like a Master archer with his bow, even if Gisbourne had kissed him senseless, even if Guy had done all that…

"It was nothing," Robin whispered, but he knew it wasn't, because one wasn't plagued by nothings every night.

Robin knew things were changing, lines were blurring.

The waters no longer holding any pleasure Robin huffed a sigh, his damned thoughts had ruined his swim for good now, _"Might as well be getting back before Much sends out a search party." _

Amusing himself with what Much would say upon his return he was caught unawares by the cold kiss of steel at his neck, he half turned his eyes wide before he gritted his teeth, _"Stupid! Bloody stupid" _he cursed himself.

"Did you enjoy the show Vaisy?" he called out and sure enough with a rustle of bushes and leaves the sheriffs leering face popped from the forest.

"Oh yes," he said sauntering up to the captured outlaw, harmless as a babe in the woods.

Vaisy pressed closer invading personal boundaries as the edges of his garments brushed Robins naked skin, "But not nearly as much as I shall enjoy _you_," a stray hand sliding down the small of Robins' back.

The sheriff laughed merrily as Robin recoiled, "You move again and my guard will skewer you like a stuck pig," his words punctuated by a slap to the outlaws pale arse, leaving a scarlet imprint of his hand.

Robin glared darkly contemplating fighting anyhow; perhaps death was better than what the sheriff seemed to plan.

_"But what if he's only bluffing? What if he decides only to hang me? In that route there's hope, I can free myself, or Much will have to come to my rescue…"_ he nearly laughed at that thought, though true it was. Much would never leave him in the sheriffs' clutches, _"What if he doesn't know, and what then?"_

"I can hear your mind turning ideas in that pretty head of yours let me save you the trouble before you hurt yourself with all that thinking. Me bluffing? A clue: no. I will see you hang Robin make no mistake, however why not take what I can from this delicious opportunity, hmm?" the sheriff asked with a perfectly straight face, watching Robin with a dangerous gleam in his eye.

He tried to strike a confidant stand but that was hard to do, being naked and all.

"Should we march him to Nottingham in naught but his skin?" the sheriff asked the guards who chuckled, "Which would you rather Loxley?" Robin didn't answer, holding his silence with a glower, again hardly effective when one brandished neither weapon nor clothed.

The water from his bath was rapidly cooling his skin as the wind blew hard and heavy in harsh cold gusts leaving Robin in his exposed state cold, hanging onto his dignity by a thread as droplets ran down his thighs, chest, and face.

"Clothes I think, we don't want to draw to much attention…yet." He donned his clothing affecting a picture of calmness to the best of his ability – as though he hadn't a worry in his head, as though Vaisy wasn't looking at him like a cat would a mouse.

"Tie him good, we wouldn't want to have him escaping because that just wouldn't do" Vaisy said to his men, "Of course sheriff" the guard agreed tonelessly. "One more thing, it'll be your head Captain if he does" Vaisy finished dismissing them, and Robin with a flick of his hand as he plowed ahead to the waiting carriage.

"Come on you!" the captain snarled tying the outlaws' hands efficient enough to cut off circulation. "You try anything at all you mangy cur-" Robin's sharp laugh cut him off abruptly and had the captain snarling like a rabid dog. Robin knew he was pressing dangerous grounds but he couldn't help himself, what more had he to loose?

"You'll what? Kill me? That is already on the sheriffs to do list."

This time the captain laughed, a rough barking cackle, "He'll have you hang alright, if your lucky it'll be before he takes to much more personal interest in plowing your body!" he sneered cruelly, "Maybe he'll sell your services for coin, a good way to make up for your thieving ways and a small sum on the side" the captain mocked, "That would be fitting."

The captain laughed a while longer knowing he'd won this round, but Robin could no longer find any clever words for the fear coursing through his body, shaming him as greatly as the captains vile words.

Robin jogged behind the captains horse praying he'd not stumble, to busy watching his feet to think of how badly he wanted to wring Vaisy's neck, and of course he wasn't envisioning how Vaisy's smug face would turn red, then purple, and of course he want thinking how much he'd enjoy that because that wasn't what he was about.

_"I don't kill, I'm the peace lover…right?"_ he reminded himself with a deep aggravated breath remembering the liberties taken with his person, _"For him I might make an exception." _

"Faster cur! Faster, or I shall drag you behind my horse the rest of the way!" the captain bellowed, Robin knew it was no bluff, and with a flick of his wrist his horsewhip sail perilously close to Robins ear, sounding off a brittle crack.

"_Definitely"_ Robin scowled.

Arriving at Nottingham was no great fanfare since the guards manhandled him through the kitchen to the shrieking disapproval of the maids and cook who backed away as though he carried the plague. Obviously Vaisy didn't want news of his capture to become common knowledge.

"_How strange,"_ Robin mused.

That's about when he knew he was in for it this time, and his only likely ally in this castle with its people as empathetic as the stone creating it, was also his worst enemy.

_"If Gisbourne is to be my only hope, then God have mercy on my soul, because I'm dead."_

* * *

_Present:_

He vaguely realized the story had ended and a commentary, an insult on the captured outlaws intelligence at the least, was expected. None was forthcoming.

"Loxley is in the dungeons I presume?" _he is alive?_ Was what he really asked, what he needed to know with every fiber of his being, even though his head told him he didn't, if he had a heart and many said he didn't, it would be straddling the fence between acceptance and the peaceful absolution of denial. But Vaisy needn't know that.

In fact, he could never know that.

He'd crucify him for the thoughts he was thinking.

"Do I look like a fool, hmm? Do I Gisbourne?" the sheriff snarled with a beady glare fixed on Gisbourne who refused to bend under that hard gaze, "Of course not my lord" Gisbourne was quick to say in conciliation, shaking his head for good measure.

"No Loxley's not in the dungeons, how many times have those ruffians broken prisoners out, hmm? To many to risk Hood being there, for now leastwise" he said a queer gleam coming into his eye.

Gisbourne bit his tongue and accepted the information Vaisy doled out.

_"He's alive at least, but how long with that be?" _Gisbourne asked of himself, _"And what am I to do now?"_ that was the question of the hour, would he do something with the knowledge he had, or would he let sleeping monsters, _and sheriffs' schemes_, lie.

_"There's nothing I can bloody well do, and it's not my place to be rescuing the damned man, he has his men to do that, not me. At the end of the day I care nothing for Loxley" _he insisted, as though moments ago he hadn't been hanging off Vaisy's every word that he may glean information relating to said outlaw.

_"Thou protests to much methinks!" _his inner voice proclaimed quite cheerfully, sounding like Robin at his most annoying.

For the next hour Gisbourne stormed back and forth in his chambers like a cornered bear debating fleeing and attack. The opportunity for acting was taken out of his hands when the sheriff sent him a missive, until then he hadn't realized how back he wanted it, an pretext, a reason to bail, to walk away and say _"There was nothing I could have done"._

The missive was requesting that Gisbourne double the scouts on Nottingham's walls and an addition guard at Knighton with implicit orders that he keep watch of Marion and her father for the next few days, _"Can never be to careful in these rebellious times Gisbourne, details make the difference between dead and alive, rich…and poor"_ he'd written hastily.

Gisbourne grimaced, this smelled like busy work to him, even a stable boy could accomplish these things!

His ego stung Gisbourne stalked down the hallway stopping midway, later he would wonder what had possessed him to dillydally when there was errands to run –even if they were beneath him. He heard the shuffling clank of irons before he saw the man in them.

It was Him, Gisbourne calmly searched his mind for some kind of excitement, contentment, justice, or sense of rightness, but all he could think was _wrong, wrong, wrong._

Wrong like the caged birds in the sheriffs' chambers.

It was this selfsame wrongness that held Gisbourne at a standstill, as much a captive as his long-time adversary one-time night.

And so it was he could not bring himself to turn away, he had to see, to know. Electric blue met with suspicious brown, murky questions lurking in their depths they held fast, drawn, it was over in a moment and Gisbourne felt his measuring gaze flick over him and found him to be lacking, no doubt, the moment receded with a clattering of iron against iron the sounds eerily loud with an echoing of finality.

_"Stop gawking like a virgin maid peeking at her husband on the wedded night!" _he snarled with a deep-seated disgusted coupled with a nameless disquiet "He is an outlaw, soon to receive his just deserts" he muttered beneath his breath, half realizing through his thoughts that he still hadn't moved, and they were soon to be creating a scene stopped in the hall, _"an outlaw and the sheriffs man sizing one another up that's all anyone will see."_

"Gisbourne."

"Loxley."

"Why no smirk? Surely you owe me that seeing as how our little game has come to a close" Robin remarked with interest Gisbourne did not share frozen, enthralled, and thoroughly appalled with himself he snarled back "Throwing in so soon?"

"You know me Guy, always with an ace up m'sleeve" he remarked with a thoroughly blasé look that somehow held both contempt and checked amusement, as was his nature; always with some secret joke that only he knew.

Gisbourne ached an elegant brow, black as a ravens wing, in response, "So it was your idea to be caught in naught but you're skin?" he taunted, pleased by the faint blush coloring Loxley's face, he moved pulling loose of whatever enchantment that help him immobile stepping close till they were nose to nose, "To bad I missed the show, eh?"

His words were meant to humiliate, embarrass, and discomfit, to knock the damned man out of his still confidence that he affected like a second skin…but they came out entirely wrong, to husky, to intimate.

"Isn't it though?" the outlaw said nonplussed and with those words shoved past on his own slapping off the guards grabby hands and was gone from sight.

By the time he had turned and walked away his horse had been saddled and brought round, people darted out of his path as he spurred his mount down the cobbled streets, the drawbridge of Nottingham at his back looming like a blot on his soul, or his salvation – he didn't know which.

He was well on his way to Knighton Manor, to Marion, and he was still thinking of _Him._

Loxley…_Robin_.

Wet and fresh-faced water sluicing down his face, his perfect lips made for kissing, and a body made for ravishing.

He imagined his mouth following the rivulets of streaming water kissing his way down, down, the taste of his skin – he still remembered – _salty and sharp_ – he still recalled the feel of legs wrapped tight, made for wrapping around a mans waist, his waist.

Robin truly had a body made to be ravished.

_"Get a grip man! He's no piece of horse-flesh to be measured, bought, and sold!"_ he scolded himself disgusting once again digging in its talons, _"Isn't he though?"_ this voice he knew, it was proof that he spent to much time in Vaisy's presence.

"No" Gisbourne denied, "No."

And that was that.

* * *

Knight Guardian: _This is my sequal to "The Night That Never Was" I hereby give you "Divided Loyalty." I hope you enjoy, as ever please R&R._

_Thanks._


	2. Chapter 2

Robin truly had a body made to be ravished.

_"Get a grip man! He's no piece of horse-flesh to be measured, bought, and sold!"_ he scolded himself disgusting once again digging in its talons, _"Isn't he though?"_ this voice he knew, it was proof that he spent to much time in Vaisy's presence.

"No" Gisbourne denied, "No."

And that was that.

"Of all the bloody times to grow a conscience!" Gisbourne finally snarled beneath his breath, his anger exploding. "Of all the times to go and get himself caught" he went on, his only audience the trees and his blissfully ignorant horse, lucky beast.

His hands clenched and unclenched systematically, the farther he got from Nottingham, from _Him_, the more these thoughts plagued him.

He was Guy of Gisbourne, he was said to possess many things. However a conscience wasn't one of them, he belatedly wondered if it wasn't too late to loose that too.

It was a damned annoying thing to cart around.

It was hardly his fault.

Loxley signed his fate the moment he became an outlaw.

Directing his mount with half a mind he echoed more rationalizations.

"_He's my enemy, he wouldn't think twice about slipping a blade in my gullet"_ but that was blatantly false, Loxley didn't kill, he'd lost all taste for blood, Loxley wasn't like him.

_"He's my enemy,"_ he reminded himself resignedly.

"_Ah, but see you conveniently forgot this that night in Sherwood"_ his other more provocative voice whispered, sounding of honey and wine. Gisbourne floundered, searching for an excuse, an answer, anything.

_"I made a mistake" _but even as the words left his lips he felt his heart quicken, that night had been many things, but his body reminded him that it was a mistake it very much wanted to repeat.

_"I care nothing for the men, he was a good tumble, that is all" _he mocked, even as the crude words made his chest tighten,_ "What am I becoming…what have I become…" _he silently demanded of himself, his breath rough and ragged, his eyes darkening, bleak.

_"That's something the sheriff would say"_ he thought absently before going ramrod straight in the saddle, _"The sheriff…God have mercy…he wouldn't…its only the first night…he wouldn't…he wont" _Gisbourne reassured himself, but now the seeds of doubt had been sown – and they would not leave.

_"Marion would not do nothing,"_ he thought with a mix of regret and suspicion.

"_I have more to loose than her. The ranting of a woman is nothing compared to the siding of a man with one such as Robin has become"_ Gisbourne justified, _"If she were so brazen as to defy the sheriff, she is a woman and can thus be overlooked or mildly reproved. If I ever dared so much as she…I'd be executed for treason against the crown"_

Gisbourne gritted his teeth, _"It doesn't matter, and it is beyond me now. Loxley will survive. And when I returned mayhap I'll see how far I dare cross the line"_ he thought to pacify his newly budding conscience.

Normally these random visits to Knighton Manor exhilarated him –though he was careful of never showing it.

This time, well this time was different.

This time he wanted to turn his horse about and ride back to Nottingham, which was ludicrous. There was nothing for him there.

_"I love Marion, I should be happy," _he snorted there was a word he seldom had cause to use, _"To see her again."_

"_Do you really, truly love her? Are you sure?" _asked that voice that was a mix of his conscious and Vaisy, and some other part of himself yet to be discovered.

_"A man aught to know his own mind about such matters!" _he growled_, "Aye, he should but that doesn't mean he does."_

"_You mean you don't think 'her eyes are to dark' or 'her body to curved, to female' right? Every time you look in her eyes you're never looking for pieces, fragments, of Him, because of course you love her, right?" _the voice inside his head threw at him with no little sarcasm.

_"Right. I mean no! That's absurd" _Gisbourne scowled growling like a madman, glad that he had no company on the road this day.

This would have continued until Gisbourne reached Knighton without a doubt, if he hadn't been set upon by outlaws.

He heard the twang of an arrow sailing past his ear right before his horse, good for nothing brute, reared up with a panicked whinny taking off for parts unknown leaving him to deal with the bandits alone. Gisbourne cursed the beast again as he picked himself off his arse with his pride stung something fierce.

"Look here mates!" one of them exclaimed loudly, the one with the crafty look about him, "Robin would'a liked to have seen that" he announced to one and all, to Gisbourne's deep dismay, he hated the man for an outlaw, and now he hated him twice over for his arrogant disposition.

The dirty-blond one who was prone to following after Robin, like a lost puppy, Gisbourne surmised with distaste must be Much. Jealousy stirred in his gut.

"Your purse, if you would be so kind" Much said with an air of one who expects to be obeyed, this more than anything else is what took Gisbourne off guard. And thus he complied, though when he dallied to long he found himself intimately acquainted with the mans sword.

"You're coin, where is it. I warn you I'm in no mood to be trifled with."

Gisbourne took him at his word, as Much had the look of a man in ill tempers.

It crossed his mind that the answer to all his problems was staring him in the face, and it would be so simple, so easy. Tell them they were Robins' men; let them do what they would.

If Robin lived or died, let it then be on their shoulders…but he didn't, either from pride, or some other unnamable emotion he said nothing, and with his silence tested the hand of fate.

"You have your money, let me pass" he snapped irately, "I have business to attend to."

Allan frowned, "What's your hurry, more villagers to tax out of home and hearth?" he snapped right back.

"You have what you want, release me, unless you have turned from simple outlawry to murder?" he sneered, "Don't tempt us" Allan warned, "We do not kill" John reminded them in a voice brooking no arguments, "Johns right, let him go," this from Robins little servant, Much.

Gisbourne stomped off in a rage that had only slightly cooled to a mild resentment by the time he reached the doors of Knighton Manor, and it wasn't so much his stolen money, or his wayward horse, as thoughts of the little servant that was always sniffing at Robin boots that had him tied in knots.

_"Was he sleeping with Robin? Was he the one Robin reached for in the dead of night?"_ Gisbourne shook his head mockingly, Robin didn't reach for anyone, of what Gisbourne knew, and he knew a lot, Robin was nothing if not fiercely independent, _"Like Marion"_ the thought slipped in quietly and he could not deny it.

"_No more thinking"_ he rebuked himself, all this thinking was tugging him in circles and every plausible ending began with Robin and that just wouldn't suite.

Though it irked him he had no choice but to present himself, horseless, without coin, and gritty from his walk.

Within seconds Marion opened the door her usually impeccable manners tested as she stared, for a moment, Gisbourne pretended she was just looking at him, not what had been done by the outlaws.

"Whatever happened to your horse, and yourself?" were the first words from her mouth, "Stolen, along with my coin" Gisbourne growled, "I'm sorry for your troubles" she offered with a halfhearted smile, but her sky-blue eyes twinkled suspiciously.

Gisbourne failed to see the amusement in this but allowed it to pass without comment.

"May I come in?" Gisbourne requested peering around her shoulder wondering, was she entertaining another guest?

He dismissed the thought.

This was Marion after all.

"Where are my manners, please, come in" she invited preceding him through the doorway. Edward stood with forced politeness proffering a stiff-necked nod, "Good afternoon Gisbourne, I trust you are well?"

"I would fare better if outlaws didn't crowd so close to the roads stealing the belongings of passerby's" Gisbourne snapped smoothing his unruly hair out of his face, sweat giving it a blue-tinged sheen.

"Then perhaps one should be more alert for such events…or make fewer trips," Edward suggested serenely.

"To be sure" Gisbourne snorted. Marion cleared her through anxiously, breaking the rising tension "A drink Sir Guy?"

"Please" Gisbourne said with a nod of his head, "What news have you from Nottingham?" she inquired as she poured their drinks, and if Gisbourne had been watching he'd have seen the fast-buried glance of disbelief she cast his way.

"Nothing worthy of mention" he said briskly, more so than he'd intended.

"_Except that the sheriff holds Robin Hood prisoner even as I stand here wasting time with idle chatter"_ but this he didn't say, no one knew yet after all. It was the sheriffs little secret.

"Oh" was her simple reply. The disappointment coloring her words made him feel like a certified arse.

"Things have been quiet of late, m'lady" he expanded with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

That, at least, was no lie.

"That's odd," she muttered, as though to herself speaking more loudly when Gisbourne arched an eyebrow, "Isn't it?" she demanded flushing hotly, as thought caught out.

"Aye, your right of course but I suspect things shall remain so for a spell." _Until Robins men learn the truth. Until some mad fool attempts to rescue him. _

Although Guy didn't say any of this either, for a split second questioning if he might not be one such a mad fool.

"_Likely it'll never come to that, Robin will see to saving his own skin"_ Gisbourne pondered and wondered if the rush that ran through his blood was disappointment…or relief?

Relief. For a certainty.

"Guy?"

"Hm?"

Marion smiled gently, and this time is was genuine. "For a moment you seemed to be miles away" she remarked, but didn't broach the subject further. Gisbourne couldn't believe what was coming over him, here he was within touching distance of a warm, beautiful woman, of Marion, and still his mind reverted to another afflicting him with thoughts of Him.

"My father will provide you with a horse, if that is your worry" she added absently, "Give my thanks to your father" Gisbourne replied, as the old man had evacuated the room some minutes prior. Coward. Gisbourne forced a smile searching for some words to say, some praise, something, anything.

"You are looking well Marion" he could kick himself, what kind of a compliment was that, _'you're looking well?' _thankfully Marion took it with her typical patiently graceful smile of unspoken recognition.

"How are things at Knighton? I hope Hood and his men haven' been bothering your estate?" he asked, even though he knew Robin would never steal a red cent from Marion and her father, he was far to principled to loot from a woman and old man.

"No, the outlaws have left us in peace for the time being" she said choosing her words with care, it wouldn't due to sound to confident of that issue lest she hand Gisbourne the noose to hang her by. His answer made her heart jump in dread, "I don't think you have much to fear from that lot" he said it with such confidence she was most unnerved.

"Outlaws by nature are unpredictable, I believe," she replied with put upon apprehension, "You're right of course" he appeased, letting her have her way.

In any case what could it hurt? Even if he did know otherwise…this house would never be touched, and if it were it would not be by Robins command.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" he asked suddenly, he could see his request had startled her, but he didn't take it back, "I don't know Guy…"

"I swear to protect you from the outlaws" he added the corners of his mouth tilting upwards in a faint smile, but a smile nonetheless – and she agreed, to startled to do more than nod.

"_I shouldn't be thinking this but…damn…he looks handsome when he smiled like that" _Marion thought, even as she knew her feelings to be traitorous and shameful.

_"What am I worrying about? He goes around kissing every pretty face he sees"_ she scolded tartly, not adding that he was generally the one on the receiving end – and the man didn't know how to say _'no.'_

If Marion were able to see into the future, her uncharitable thoughts would have been kinder by far, or perhaps she'd have washed her hands of him that much sooner…

* * *

He wasn't in the dungeons, he knew that much.

His first clue was the bed, last time he'd visited that part of the castle beds hadn't been part of the décor. It wasn't much to look at as far as such furnishings went, but he was no judge seeing as he hadn't slept in one for five years and counting…

Robin had been taken directly to an upper chamber of the castle, there was a window but a steep fall like that would kill any man that didn't come equipped with wings.

As for the door there were two guards posted outside with an external lock accompanied by crossbars so picking the lock was out of the question. Furthermore it would require Herculean strength - which he scarcely possessed - to take down that doubly damned door! By all appearances the sheriff had truly outdone him this time.

Then of course there were the irons tethering him to the bedpost like a dog.

Damn but this was looking worse and worse.

It was well into evening when Robin braced for a confrontation upon hearing the hard thudding of feet, he knew who it was before the lock clicked open, before the groaning of the crossbars as they slid back, before a face he'd long since come to loathe came into view.

Sheriff Vaisy.

The man had had him trussed up in irons in this boarded up chamber and left him here for the rest of the day; he was both glad of it and exasperated. He had been bored out of his mind, something told him his boredom was coming to a close.

"Enjoying your stay Robin? You must admit these accommodations are better than you've had in quite some time" Vaisy smugly announced, "I'll miss the night sky" Robin argued with a casual shrug, "For now."

Vaisy chuckled, "There's no escaping from here I assure you, accept it. I intend to hold on to you with both hands" he crooned circling just out of Robins range.

"Lets not get nasty" Robin said with forced lightness, "Oh my dear Robin, you haven't even begun to see nasty yet."

"Is that supposed to scare me?" he demanded with a bark of laughter, his infuriating grin twisting the corners of his mouth, he had a very kissable mouth Vaisy decided.

"Scare you? No…consider it a warning if you will" Vaisy said with a careless wave of his hand.

"Be straight with me, what's all this really about?" Robin asked, reclining against the bedpost, oblivious to the reaction Vaisy was having to his unaffected poise.

Vaisy looked him over, leaving there against the post, head tiled with his brown hair falling over his eyes, hands arrogantly folded across his chest, his hip closely acquainted with the bedpost, Vaisy had never thought he'd be thinking he wanted to _be_ that post, to feel that lanky form draped across him, supple, sinewy, silken softness hiding a deeper strength.

Strength he was going to break bit by bit, the thought had his heart quickening. His blood was already rushing southward leaving him painfully aroused.

Vaisy swallowed, blinking out of his daze, "This is about mixing business and pleasure."

Robin stared blankly, his normally light blue eyes turned dark by the shadows creeping over the room with the coming night.

Vaisy was not a man to be taken in by such things a beauty, he wasn't, but the sight posed before him left him hard and lusting.

Robin had a rare kind of beauty, masculine – there could be no mistaking that – the kind that grew with every glance.

Vaisy was honest enough to admit, he'd been glancing an awful lot of late.

_"And now he is mine for the taking" _Vaisy groaned, the man was such a naïve fool.

"_All in good time I suppose"_ gazing at his captive with a speculative gleam as he took his captives measure, "Its not fun when they break to soon, and they all do, and so will you" Vaisy explained dispassionately.

"Don't count on it" Robin snarled back with a hard glare that would have been fearsome if he hadn't been tethered to a bedpost. Vaisy ignored the impracticable remark; he knew it for a lie.

_Everyone_ broke, sooner or later. It was human nature.

"Sleep well tonight Robin it shall be your last night alone" Vaisy said coldly and with a flounce spun on his heel and sauntered out leaving Robin to stew in silence. Robin spent the next hour convincing himself that Vaisy hadn't meant what he thought he meant.

It hadn't been meant like that.

"_No of course not Sheriff Vaisy is a perfect Saint, and tomorrow the war will be over, the King shall return and there will be peace in England forevermore, grow up"_ his subconscious threw back mockingly reminded him sounding eerily like words Marion would reproach him with.

_"No point worrying, what will be will be"_ he thought even thought it grated to admit such a thing.

"_He has won for tonight"_ his subconscious announced a tad to smugly sounding so much like Gisbourne that Robin was unsettled and spent the rest of the long night tossing and turning. The bed was too soft, his thoughts too loud; he would have no peace that night_. _

"_Damn it, how am I going to get out of this one?" _was the thought he fell asleep on, his tried mind skimming through possible scenarios for escaping, and when dreams came they were no respite, though hardly nightmares they would disturb his waking mind.

He dreamed of darkness, and blood, and screaming soundlessly into the indifferent night.

And that's when he woke, engulfed by total darkness. He panicked, blinded by the dark, unable to see who it was bent over him, but they were because he could feel warm breath on his neck sending tingles down his whole body. "Who goes there?" he stuttered, the fear bleeding through his words.

"Did you really think I was going to let you sleep when I have so many more pleasurable uses for you? A clue…no."

To be continued…

KnightGuardian: I hereby present chapter 2! I updated tonight just for you Sherlocks Sparrow! One and all please R & R!

Thanks.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Did you really think I was going to let you sleep when I have so many more pleasurable uses for you? A clue…no."_

For the first time since his capture Robin felt real fear.

Clever banter escaping him faced with _this. _

Torches had been lit sending shadows across the room bathing everything in there amber glow, Robin thinks he preferred the dark, then he wouldn't have to see the two guards gawking at him, as though he was the first warm body they'd seen in a good long spell, they were stationed within the chamber as the doors swung shut – the sheriffs security against him no doubt.

"You brought this on yourself you know" Vaisy said, stepping closer and closer with each word and Robin just kept backing up until finally he met with unforgiving stone.

"Enlighten me" Robin bit out, his fist curling, he was trapped, there was no where else to go, "Prancing about, dangling your oh so lovely assets under my very nose, you must have know I couldn't resist, eventually it would have come to this, you must have know."

Robin was so surprised by this entanglement of falsehoods that he laughed, he could not help it, and if Vaisy disliked it, to damn bad.

"I know this game Vaisy," he said his humor dying out, his voice flat, "I'm not quite the green fool you make me."

Vaisy paused, only a little surprised.

"You've done this before…haven't you, were you a good little crusader-boy for _him_? I can see it now, he says _'kneel' _and you ask _'how far down'_ he says _'roll over'_ you ask _'where your majesty'_ , to have such control over another. Over _you_. There's a heady thrill in that" the sheriff explained as though Robin were his pupil and he the master.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Robin snarled in heated denial beginning to shake, his face flushing in anger or humiliation; Vaisy licked his lips hoping for the latter.

"Don't you though?" he asked all the while pressing Robin back against the wall running his tongue from cheek to ear in on wet stripe, just to see the horror on Robins' face.

"Get the hell away from me you sick son of a whore" Robin growled his eyes darkening, promising vengeance.

"Now, now Robin, play nice."

Chains clanking as the captive scrambled to the left, his final mistake. One push from Vaisy and Robin was laid out flat on his back, a covert signal from the guards and they were on him like a swarm.

Robin kicked sheriff in the ribs, an act he'd pay for soon enough, and gave the guard with the surly look a black shiner to show for his troubles. But they had him cuffed to the bed in under two minutes, struggles not withstanding.

It had been futile from the start.

Robin tugged on the iron cuffs, but there was no escaping them, nor _this_.

"Dagger" Vaisy requested holding out his hand, the surly guard dutifully handed over his own.

Robin watched Vaisy with veiled eyes, burying everything beneath a stoic mask of hostility and burning hatred shooting from his eyes like death.

He refused to let the sheriff get the better of him. _"This is just another kind of game he is playing,"_ he told himself, _"It cannot last forever." _

He held still as the clothes were cut from his body, the tip dragging purposefully at the hollow of his hip trailing a scarlet line of blood, "Oops" Vaisy laughed.

A few torturous minutes later and Robin was laid bare to the sheriffs gaze, and what a feast he presented.

Pale skin flawless, but for the scar left by the wound that almost killed him. A long lean body, supple and strong brushed in translucent tones magnified by the amber glow, narrow hips that led to legs that went on for miles.

Vaisy could hardly contain his burgeoning desire to possess this man before him, to take him, to break him, and finally to _own_ him.

Robin bucked wildly when the sheriff straddled his hips, a futile attempt that had Vaisy moaning and thrusting against his thigh in delight the rough cloth of the mans breeches rubbing painfully against the outlaws exposed body, then he was kissing him a pressing of mouth to mouth, Vaisy pulled back, "Open your mouth" he ordered, Robin shook his head like a sullen child refusing to eat his vegetables.

"I said…" a backhand to the left cheek hard enough to snap Robins head to the side, "Open" another to his rich leaving them stinging and red, "Your" a hand reached between their entwined bodies grabbing Robins cock hard, squeezing tight, "Mouth."

Robin was gasping and groaning when the sheriff forced his tongue into his mouth as he crushed Robin's lips to his own with bruising force, a horrid parody of a kiss.

One second Vaisy was raping Robins mouth with his tongue, the next he was screeching for the guards holding a bloody linen to his lips praying he still had all his tongue.

The guards stared in horror, "My lord?"

"Do som'ting!" Vaisy snarled, trying to staunch the blood flow, "What are your orders, my lord?" the guards asked.

"Punish 'm!" Vaisy demanded turning his beady glare onto the guards, "Yes, but what do you want done to him?"

"Gah! Use your im'gination! Fetch the whip," he snarled spitting blood.

"Shouldn't we fetch the doctor too my lord?" they asked, "No, no, jus' get me that damned whip!" Vaisy snarled, his words less slurred as the blood came to a trickle he spun to glare at his captive.

"What did you expect sheriff?" Robin demanded unrepentant his eyes blazing right back at the older man. Vaisy nodded, "You made you're point, effic'ntly, and now you're going to pay for it."

"I know."

Vaisy disliked the mans confidence, his arrogance, the joke that he was taking this as. As though it were just some great game to him, and when it was over he could wash his hands of it and walk away…

_"He wont be walking, not without extreme discomfort if I have anything to say about it"_ Vaisy mused with a dark bout of laughter that unnerved the guards who had only just managed to secure the struggling captive to the bedpost at the left foot of the bed, it had been no easy thing.

It seemed the sheriffs desire would have to wait until Loxley had been suitably punished, then, and only then would he tumble Robin, and tumble the outlaw he would before the night was out.

"I was going to make the first night…nicer…but I guess that's out of the question now isn't it" he announced with a put upon sigh as though this were some greatly unexpected annoyance.

"Nicer?" Robin sputtered indignantly, "I wasn't aware there was a nice way to go about fucking someone whose saying _no_."

Vaisy chuckled, clearly amused, "Ah but Robin, you weren't saying _"no" _now where you" the sheriff reminded him tsking.

"Would you have cared?" Robin demanded craning his head around to pin Vaisy with a glare, "No" Vaisy said wholly unrepentant "Then why should I have wasted my breath?"

Vaisy gritted teeth, he was supposed to beg, and plead, and cry prettily, that's how he had always imagined it.

That underneath that clever, and very kissable, mouth and those confident swaggers Robin would be soft, worn down by war, by _him_, by the unfair world because if the world was fair there would be peace on earth, but was there?

A clue. No.

And thus here they stood, Robins pale naked body on display his breaths steady, feet slightly spread supporting him with his arms enclosed around the bedpost like a long lost lover returned at last.

The whip slapped harmlessly against the guards mail clad thigh as he awaited further orders.

"Twenty lashes should do it" Vaisy instructed, "You their boy, fetch me a chair. What? You think I jest? Get it, now!" Vaisy ordered and the guards nearly tripped over his own two feet rushing out, "He new?" he asked turning to Surely.

"Aye, he is but Jamie wont be no problem" Surely grunted. "Begin" Vaisy said, "That boy aught to hurry if he knows what's good for him" he muttered on the side.

Surely, wisely kept his mouth shut.

The first lash laid a line from shoulder to hip followed with a blazing trail of agony that had Robin grinding his teeth, this wasn't so bad, really he could take it…

The second a perfect parallel giving a whole new meaning to X marks the spot, the third and the lad was back, _"Jamie, they called him Jamie"_ Robin reminded focusing on that, on anything but how much this bloody hurt.

Robin had little sympathy when retching could be heard and thumping, the chair being dropped, then the sheriff cursing the ailing young guard.

"Stupid incompetent…" he heard snatches, pieces, words, sentences drowned out by the cracking of the whip as Surely laid into him with a vengeance.

"…When I say jump you jump!" he heard the sheriff snarl. Robin tossed sweaty hair from his eyes and laughed, causing Vaisy to roar at Surely, "What are you a woman, he shouldn't be conversing, he's supposed to be screaming for god sakes…not laughing!"

Robin paid for that one with a stripe across his arse, Surely's idea of a crude joke no doubt.

Robin just clamped his mouth shut biting down his muffled groans.

But God was it hard.

Vaisy slumped down in his chair glumly, all that could be heard was the crack of the whip, and harsh ragged breaths, loud in the otherwise silent chamber, and of course the gulping and shuffling of Jamie.

"This you're first time son?" Vaisy asked, as though he hadn't just finished screaming at the petrified youth, "I mean, the first time seeing a man punished for his crimes?" he expanded blandly, with such coldness the youth was unnerved further.

"Yes, sir."

"Accustom yourself to it, from now on you are assigned to this criminal, and he has the habit of heaping punishment on himself" Vaisy announced, "Yes, sir" Jamie repeated, "What's his name sir?" the guard inquired in his usual quiet respectful manner.

Vaisy opened his mouth but was drowned out by another voice.

"The names Robin" the whip cracked, hard, forcing a gasp past bloodless lips, but the captive twisted his head to the side and for a second their eyes met, Robin and Jimmies.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"Must say this is" soft panting, "A rather unorthodox meeting" he went on doggedly, Jamie's eyes flicked to the guard who was swinging the whip like a blacksmith does his hammer.

He wanted to tell the blasted fool to shut up already, but hadn't the courage.

"That's what fourteen?" Robin gasped out conversationally.

"Oh give me that already you must hit like a girl!" the sheriff snapped jerking the whip from the clearly ineffectual guard.

By nineteen Robins body was a writhing mass of agony, it seemed Vaisy was in the moment because they had passed the allotted number and were still counting…

"_Damn it all, he's gonna whip me to death." _

Vaisy relished the sight, the outlaw was slumped held upright only by shaky legs and his bound wrists he was panting hard, his lungs sucking in air greedily, bleeding, bloody lines of scarlet painted his back, numerous welts running down below his navel in vivid red blots leaving pools of blood to trickle at his feet, "You're getting blood all over the floor Robin, do you know how hard it is to get blood stains out?" he demanded shaking his head mournfully.

"Go to hell Vaisy" was all the sheriff got in reply, that and a death glare blunted only faintly by the pain that raced through Robin's body, if he had let it would have undone him, but he refused handing on by a thread.

"All in good time, but first lets finish what we started shall we?" Vaisy proposed, his smile widening when Robin struggled weakly, "Keep your hands off me" he demanded.

"No, that's not how this goes."

Jamie looked to the other, experiences guard for his cue to bail but it was never given.

"You two there go back to the door, you're part is done here" Vaisy ordered not even bothering to glance there way.

"Now, where was I?" Vaisy murmured in Robins ear, with one hand dragging his nails down the mans already wounded back, while he unlaced his breeches with the other.

Robin arched his back a vain attempt at escape, he was tied, trapped, and at the sheriffs mercy.

He could _feel_ Vaisy rubbing against him, the grinding of flesh on flesh, he can _feel_ his hot breath at his shoulder, but what he feels the most is the fear running rampant though his veins – he cant beat it back much longer – to tired, to much blood loss, to much _everything_.

He just cant, he lets it have its way making his body shudder, _traitor_, and his eyes sting involuntarily, _traitor_!

Then there's a new feeling, familiar in its ambiguity as Vaisy's cold grabby hands close around his hips forcing him still, not that he _can_ move not that he has, he's gripping hard there will be finger shaped bruises come the morning.

Robin stiffens as his legs are spread, and Vaisy muttering, "Be a good whore…don't make this hard…" he might have gone on but Robin wasn't listening.

Distantly, as though from a long distance he hears Jamie whispering to Surely, "He's not really going to…you know…is he?"

Vaisy answered that question with a single violent thrusting of his hips and Robin barely stifles his cry, it became damn near unbearable when he begins moving, in out, in out, each stroke deeper, harder.

Black dots dance across his vision but he fights it, because it's the only thing he can.

Robin can feel his body stretched beyond its capacity, knows this because he can feel his skin tearing, bleeding each time Vaisy impales him with his cock, each time he feels the nauseating slap of Vaisys' balls against his arse, and its almost more than he can stand.

_Pain, shame, humiliation, anger_ coursed through Robin as the sheriff rutted over him like a dog in heat, thrust, grunt, thrust, grunt, thrust…

"_God finish soon." _

The pain was horrible, he felt like he was being ripped open from the inside, he burned and ached and hurt so bad his vision blurred but black oblivion never claimed him.

The outlaw suffered through as Vaisy fucked him bloody, he could feel it, blood, smeared along the inside of his thighs, he could_ smell _it, tangy copper.

Blood, blood, blood, everywhere…

Vaisy was groaning, his movements becoming jerky and erratic but his grip never wavered each thrust driving Robin mad with pain from all sides as his hips were slammed against the wooden bedpost, again, and again, and then it slowed as Vaisy peaked shouting his name, a profanity on his lips.

Vaisy pulled his cock out with deliberate slowness, taking in his handiwork with a small, proud, smile of twisted satisfaction.

"Now whose the whore, eh Robin?" he murmured in the other mans ear, stroking his blood soaked body before strutting from the room, with his departure Robin curls in on himself, all strength going out of him in a whoosh, but he refused to give in to the hot aching sting of tears.

Men didn't cry.

* * *

**Knight Guardian:** _Reviews are much appreciated, thanks!_


	4. Chapter 4

Twilight encased the sky in its swirls of mist, and shadows painted gray casting the forest beneath a cloud of doom as wind bellowed gently through the swaying trees, rustling softly.

All lay quiet and still in these early hours of dusk.

All lay quiet, but all was not right within Sherwood.

_"Something is very wrong…" _

_"I can feel it in my stomach…"_

_"Something is terribly wrong…"_

These thoughts and more kept the fair-haired outlaw from sleep; this inexplicable fear that had overcome him in the early hours of night all but consumed him, eating him up with worry for his errant master.

He looked about him but all the others were snoring contentedly.

He wished he were overreacting, he did that he'd been told, but he wasn't not now, he knew it with such conviction it scared him, _"Maybe I am wrong, maybe Robin is visiting late with Marion" _he was shaking his head as soon at the thought crossed, Marion always upheld propriety betwixt them and having him linger late at her Manor was not proper.

Sometimes he thinks she is colder than needs to be, is a bit of boyish fun truly deserving of such cool distain?

This is the side of Robin she can never accept, but Much thinks its only because she's never seen his face when he is _serious_, its like then, _Acre, Palestine_, harsh flat lines with a tinge of shadow in his blue eyes.

Its because of this that Much only rolls his eyes and sighs at his masters antics.

No, Robin wouldn't be with Marion.

_"Then where?"_ he did not know, none of the gang had been surprised at his absence Allan had loudly proclaimed "He's likely tryin' to escape your hoverin' for a spell! Not being funny here but really Much, you nag like a mother hen" Much had turned red and stomped off angrily, saying only, "I do not!" the snickers had followed him until he plopped down some ways off kicking at a rock angrily, they were likely right.

He did have a bad habit of hovering.

But there are worse habits to have, such as being a thief and a liar, Allan, or a notorious trouble magnet, Robin.

Much flung an arm over his face, all these fears and there wasn't a thing to be done.

When sleep finally drew the outlaw back into its embrace his dreams were disquieting, filled with dark places and rivers of roses seeping in blood, and hunger.

When mornings light touched the sky Much was first to rise he looked about hoping that Robin had slipped back among their number some time in the night – he hadn't.

"No use worrying on an empty stomach" he grumbled wearily making a simple meal of smoked ham and bread. The others were quick to rise once the smell of food reached their noses.

Much was gratified when Will asked if Robin had returned, he'd begun to think that they'd forgotten him all in the span of a day!

Then he'd said "No, and I must say this is not like him."

"Do you think there might be a harmless reason for this?" Will asked quietly, Much kicked at a rock sending it rolling towards Allan, quite by accident, "I hope…I wish it was that, a harmless reason I mean" Much explained running a hand through his hair, already badly rumpled and mussed from sleep.

"Help! Somebody! Please!" The outlaws were on their feet, grabbing for their nearest weapons when a young boy of no more than ten summers ran into their camp, "Easy there mate, what's the problem?" Allan asked a hand on the lads shoulder to steady him, "There been a fire in my village, the field, the homes, my home, burned all of it to the ground! My mother, now she don't have 'nough to pay the taxes or food, and my sis' she's only six misters, you must help" the lad pleaded his eyes wide and tearful.

"What can we do?" Allan mouthed over the boys shoulder.

"Of course we'll do what we can" Much announced, ignoring John and Allan's looks.

Djac and Will both nodded standing beside the boy who sniffled gratefully, "Mother don't know I came but I had to try, she'll be pleased to meet ya I'm sure" the boy added wanly.

"Pleased to meet me?" Much asked astounded.

"Course, she always did say she wanted to meet you mister Robin Hood, though I always thought you'd be…well come along now quick!" the lad said leading the flabbergasted Much, and the rest followed with quiet snickers.

Much was _not _amused, this only served to remind him of his masters absence making his heart clenched tightly.

His master would have to wait, wherever he was, there was a family to aid and a fire to put out. Much told himself its what he would have wanted.

_"Be safe master, for all our sakes."_

* * *

Of all the tasks in the castle, the sheriff had assigned him this one. The young guard cursed but halted fighting the urge to check over his shoulder for his mother to come at him with a bar of soap and her switch, couldn't forget that.

Speaking of soap he looked at the dirtied washrag in his hand then at the expanse of naked, blood crusted skin sighing resignedly.

Of all the tasks he could imagine, playing nursemaid to a criminal was not one of them.

The outlaw was silent, the kind of silent that made ears ring, and breaths excruciatingly loud, it was the kind of silent that made Jamie squirm like a schoolboy awaiting his punishment.

The silence made him nervous, which made his hands sake ever so slightly, which made cleaning off the blood gratuitously painful.

He flinched as hard as the outlaw did when he pressed it to the sweat slicked skin; the silence was deafening and long lasting.

He'd tried to ignore the rush of sympathy he felt when the outlaw had crumpled, all strength gone out of him as the sheriff left the chamber, but it was hard not to react when you see a man kneeling on the floor shaking with muffled, tearless, sobs.

It was gut wrenching.

"I'm sorry," he murmured when the mans' shoulders jerked the rag pressing to hard, no answer. No great surprise there.

Jamie grit his teeth and sucked it up, the criminal could take it, he'd been whipped bloody and other unmentionables had been done to his person.

The man was no wilting lily; he could, and would, stand to have the blood cleaned off him.

Jamie just wished he didn't have to be the one to do it; he didn't have the stomach for this line of work.

He hadn't signed up to be a wet nurse for some good for nothing outlaw.

"If its sympathy you want you'd best look elsewhere for it," the words were scathing and hard giving no quarter.

This is when the young guard realized he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. Words he'd never intended to be heard, but they had – no taking it back now.

"I don't want your sympathy" the young guard snapped and if the rag pressed harder than necessary, so be it.

"Of course not. I'm a…how did you put it 'a good for nothing outlaw', right?" Robin taunted, the words quiet but forceful.

"Be quiet"

"Or what? You'll whip me?"

The rag pressed and dragged, making the outlaw squirm and gasp beneath his breath.

"Touché!" Robin jeered, and if the words came out on a shaky gasp he overcame the brief show of weakness with a clever retort, but he couldn't recall just what as the rough hewn cloth, sopping in wet reddening water, dragged over jagged lines of crisscrossing scarlet.

If he hadn't been so busy being clever he would have been screaming.

But that would mean Vaisy had won, and that Robin could not allow.

Then the lad was sighing _again_ and Robin found his anger mounting, what did he have to sigh about?

_Was he the sheriffs' prisoner?_

_Was he the one whipped?_

_Was he the one bound naked to a bedpost?_

_Was he on the receiving end of very unwanted attentions?_

No. He was a young, wet behind the ears guard that the sheriffs had seen fit to station as his…what? Nursemaid? Caretaker?

Robin groaned, neither of them wanted it this way.

The lad wanted a manly duty, and Robin wanted to be alone so he wouldn't have to be.

"What have you to moan about boy?" the answer he got was not the one he had expected.

"I'm sorry" the words were calm, but sincere, that much Robin could tell and it vexed him something awful, he didn't _want _to empathize, he didn't want to feel sorry for the lad who was likely a hapless innocent in this, he didn't want to – but he almost did.

_"He has a conscience, does he then?"_

"Pardon?" Robin mocked, Jamie shook his head in semi-amusement the man was tied to a bedpost, naked, and he still managed to sound Lord-of-the-Manor holier-than-thou "I said…"

"You said? Spit it out already"

Jamie frowned, the man was pushing it, but he knew that didn't he?

"I said I'm sorry, my mamma taught me better than this."

If Jamie was expecting a kindly heart-to-heart he was to be badly mistaken, all he got was bitter laughter "Better than what? Better than playing nursemaid to a common outlaw? Better than trading insults with said outlaw? Or better than silently watching the Sheriff do the unspeakable to his prisoners?"

"Take your pick" Jamie muttered, and finally the criminal was silent, _"Thank God." _

Beneath the flickering torchlight and ever fading light Jamie stared unabashedly, wondering what it was about this man that drove the esteemed Sheriff Vaisy to such depths of depravity.

The criminal was nothing if not ordinary, plain even.

To Jamie, it made no sense.

This was a man, and the sheriff had done an act he was certain the Church would have him condemned to hell and damnation for.

"_And what for? He isn't even that attractive."_

Jamie was still trying to wrap his head around all that he had seen, the twisted decadence he had witnessed play out before his own two eyes – he'd been disgusted, enthralled, spellbound, without doubt by Satan's own hand.

He hadn't been able to turn his eyes away…

_Vaisy unlacing his breeches, Vaisy caressing the exposed body of the criminal who was struggling, by God was he! _

_Jamie could see the faint outline of muscles straining, could see the profile of his face, strong clean lines, haphazard hair brown, nondescript, but his eyes Jamie knew that he would never forget how they had blazed with blue fire, there had been no clichéd meeting off eyes during his ordeal, but Jamie had looked into them for a moment and was burned, half a room away, the intensity held there choked him, and he was trapped._

_He couldn't look away, like a moth drawn to its own destruction he watched…_

_The young guard had licked his lips and bit back a gasp when things progressed further, why weren't they being excused? _

_He wanted out! __And yet he didn't. _

_Then it was to late, the criminal was gasping hands scrabbling helplessly against air, there was little noise in the stonewalled room, no screams, no pleads or begging, nothing but stifled groans and the sickening, stomach turning, sound of flesh on flesh as the sheriff plundered his prisoners body, ruthlessly, maliciously. _

_The mans sick excitement was written there on his face for all to see and all Jamie had done was watch. Then it was over, thank God! _

_Sheriff Vaisy was stalking from the room and the criminal crumpled, curling in on himself in self-preservation._

Jamie shook such thoughts from his mind; they served no purpose.

This man was a criminal; maybe he had truly deserved the punishment. Maybe he had been a rapist, or murderer of children and women, a defiler of corpses.

He told himself this to excuse his own inaction, to alleviate the well of guilt damming up within. This man was a criminal, he must remember that, he was here for a reason after all; he wasn't brought in for giving handouts to the poor for goodness sake!

_"Why then? What did he do?"_ he couldn't help the curiosity, he wanted, needed to know. He wasn't going to ask, it was beneath him, he wasn't.

Truly.

"What did you do to anger the Sheriff so?" he did.

Jamie cursed his loose tongue and damned himself for a fool.

He didn't want to know, it wasn't his business!

Jamie nearly jumped when the criminal started to laugh, not that bitter barking stuff, but a real one throaty and genuine.

"What did I do to anger the Sheriff? Ah, where to begin…" again with that lighthearted mocking his lips twisted in a faint grin, at least Jamie surmised that's what it looked to be from where he knelt behind the man.

"We have time to kill" he said, as though that explained it all, even if his choice in words was poor, "Funny you should put it like that" Robin drawled his expression becoming hard as granite.

"You know what I meant," Jamie mumbled, "You shouldn't be taking that for granted lad" Robin snapped pinning the guard with a reproachful glare.

"What?" Jamie exclaimed, lost.

"That people will always understand" Robin explained wearily, with a tone that sounded entirely to superior to his ears for him to stomach well, "Tell me or be quiet!" Jamie snapped with growing ire, _"By Joe was this man was trying!"_

"My aren't we brave" Robin drawled on silken dulcet tones that were unheard of for a man underlined with unending sarcasm that Jamie was not fool enough to miss.

He couldn't believe it; this criminal just kept pushing, and pushing!

He backhanded the man, the crack of palm against cheek ominously loud, leaving Robin a bloody lip to show for his insolence.

A surge of power, adrenaline, rushed through his veins singing of respect, it was an incredible high, but when it left in a whoosh, he felt his walls crumple as certainly as the criminals had when the sheriff had flounced out only minutes, maybe hours prior – leaving him sick and mortified.

He backpedaled; he couldn't believe what he'd just done!

He'd never been prone to violence.

Never. This man brought out the worst in him, _"So your going to blame the man trussed to the post, defenseless, and already hurt worse than you can, or want, to imagine?"_ his conscience demanded murmuring: coward, brute, and father.

_"Do you want to be like your father? Hitting people, people like your mother your sister, because you can and take pleasure in it?" _his inner demons whispered rising to the surface with a vengeance, _"No!"_

"Your mama teach you to hit like that too lad?" no mocking, no faint underlining of banter weaved through these words, no grin tugging at the corner of his lips – only cold harsh words and an even colder truth he had _liked_ that, had like the control, the surge of adrenaline that made him feel…more…_something._

Jamie bowed his head in shame. _Again._

But this time he didn't waste his breath with an apology.

He was learning, Robin would give him that much.

The criminal was watching him, as much as his position would allow, and Jamie couldn't fault him when he steeled himself at ever drag of the cloth down his back, his ribs.

Jamie was nothing if not thorough quickly, if not carefully, washing away all the blood, even the humiliating stripes splitting the white skin of the mans lower back.

His silent apology was in his quick efficient manner.

When the boarded doors creaked open at half past twelve both inhabitants had jumped, "Oi! Laddie! I'm here to relieve ye fer the night" the guard announced with a smile that put Jamie, and Robin, ill at ease.

The guard was one Jamie had seen a few times already, but the hard gleam of his obsidian eyes had oft been unsettling to the younger guard.

"Did ye hear me laddie?" the words a rumbled growl, "Aye sir, I hear you" Jamie stuttered backing away, he must have had a look of fear on his face because the older guards lips curled back in an insufferable sneer, "Run along home and play now" he mocked, and Jamie found that he much preferred the criminals mocking to this mans.

As vexing as it was, at least he hadn't exuded such raw cruelty and violence like a second skin.

Jamie swallowed as he slowly left the room, and if his feet dragged the older guard didn't mention it, by the time Jamie was reaching for the door the guard was leaning up against the seething criminal who was tense as a bowstring, but twice a useless.

He was held fast.

His hand was sliding back the boards and pressing forward when the criminal started doing what he did best.

Talking.

"I say man, you need a dunking, badly!" Robin exclaimed, "Be quiet!" the guard snarled incensed, his face reddening.

"I seem to be getting a lot of that, _'Be quiet Robin' _or _'Hold still Robin while I fuck you'_ or _'Stop moving damn it'_ you see it just isn't in my best interest to listen to you people" Robin explained, much to the guards amusement, "Ye like to talk, eh? How's about screamin' for me then?" the guard asked with a bloodthirsty grin that sent pinpricks of icy fear through Robin.

Jamie shook his head, he wasn't going to stay and watch this.

He couldn't, but as the door closed he heard the criminals blasé remark of "I'm not much of a screamer" and almost found himself thinking _"Way to go mister." _

He darted down the hall at a fast walk, but when at the end he imagined he heard screams, but he knew it was all in his head.

That one wouldn't scream.

Snatches, fragments dogged his heels as he made good his escape:

_"Keep your hands off…damned swine smelling cur…the hell off me! Lowborn coward! Can't understand English? Said no."_

He was almost out of range when the words dwindled down and he couldn't help but hear, straining to hear, the guttural groans rending the very air impure, tainted.

There were no more words. The silence was telling and Jamie _knew_, and kept walking, wishing he _didn't._

He sought his bunk, having no wish for idle chitchat or merrymaking, and he knew if he ate it would not stay down.

As he lay there on his cot his mind wandered to places it should never have gone, before long he was lost to dreams that turned to nightmares of clanking chains and silent screams as his imagination painted gruesome pictures of things to come.

* * *

KnightGuardian: _To those whom have reviewed, many thanks! _

_Reviews keep my Muses happy!_


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

If there was one thing Gisbourne detested it was monotony and lengthy discussions of nothing more spectacular than the weather.

He yawned, a jaw cracking affair, not giving a damn if Edward glared hard enough to make himself blind. As ridiculous as it was, and it was _very_, he'd come to find himself missing a certain outlaw's droll banter. As least he had been amusing, even when he was beating the tar out of him over one matter or another.

Gisbourne had decided after a full night of tossing and turning, it didn't make him less a man if he found himself liking Robin more, perhaps, than a man should.

Which brought him full circle, back to thoughts of _Him._

Gisbourne had never liked an idle mind, to much time to think, to second-guess, too doubt. He had enough problems; he didn't need more added to the list from nothing more than an excess of thoughts.

If he allowed himself to think ghosts of the past had a nasty habit of slipping in, but at the moment the only one slipping through his thoughts was a quick witted outlaw, an outlaw he was almost beginning to sorely miss.

If this was a taste of England without Robin, Gisbourne was finding it lacking.

He had all but forgotten the older mans presence until he spoke, "Your thoughts look troubling Gisbourne" meanwhile Gisbourne wondered what the old man would do if he told him the truth – for once.

"_He'd keel over from a heart attack!" _a malicious voice whispered, and Gisbourne was tempted to do just that, tell him.

He could imagine how it would go over explaining to the old graybeard that he'd been having to many thoughts about a particular outlaw who was in the habit of wearing a hood.

And no, not all said thoughts ended with a hanging.

Far from it, most of his imaginings had ended with Robin pinned – naked as the day he was born – to the floor, a unsuspecting tree, whatever was availably, as Gisbourne proceeded to have his wicked way with him. Gisbourne chuckled aloud uncaring that Edward was looking at him as though he'd taken leave of his senses.

Maybe he had.

It would explain a lot, in fact.

"What do you find so amusing?" Edward asked with that same perpetual frown he constantly wore in Gisbourne's presence.

"Nothing" he said flatly turning away as Marion approached ever the polite hostess, her _politeness_ had begun to grate days ago. What had he found so attractive about her?

_"Her purity, her innocence. She would absolve your heinous crimes with her unquestioned virtue." _Gisbourne began to rethink that. There were other kinds of purity to be found in a person.

Purity of causes…fighting a Holy War faraway from home…

Purity of character…upholding a waning justice…

Marion would absolve him when he married her and took her to the marriage bed, cleansing his body and soul, tarnishing thing that it was, with her perfection.

Robin had already burned away those same faults in one night of surrender and passion.

Loxley had begun turning his head the moment he returned, so arrogant and confident standing within his own doorway a calm unflinching gaze that had seen so much that Gisbourne, thinking back now, senses he must have been a belated after thought.

Robin, who had him thinking things Marion had never even suggested, perhaps she had given him up as a lost cause long ago, he wouldn't blame her if she had. She wouldn't be the first, nor would she be the last.

Yet somehow, somewhere between, _enemies, traitor, one-night lover_ Gisbourne had changed. Had been changed.

The only thing he knew without a doubt is it wasn't Marion's purity that had initiated it, but another's fire, passion, and waning but ever present...ye Gods dare he even think it?

_Belief._

"You look far away Sir Guy, does something trouble you?" Marion pressed, ignoring her fathers' stern look of reproach. Gisbourne turned to her with a small grin, "I am just thinking how much has changed."

"Changed?" she asked, a hand lightly resting on his arm.

"Yes, since your ex-betrothed has returned" he explained and her expression grew wary and searching.

"You mean Robin?" she asked, as though she wasn't quite sure whom he was speaking of. This annoyed Gisbourne, whereas once upon a time it would have pleased him.

How is it this woman could forget him so easily, when his every thought was plagued by the insufferable man?

"Guy?" Marion asked, he frowned, "What was he like…before?" Gisbourne asked softly as he steered her away from the watchful eyes of her father.

"Who do you mean Guy?"

"Don't play coy Marion, it doesn't suit," he said more harshly than he might have wanted. "I'm surprised, isn't that what most men want in a woman's virtues, alongside, meek and obedient?" she snapped, reminding him why Marion was unlike other women.

She was to outspoken.

And so was He.

Another thing they had both paid a high price for, though between them Loxley's was the higher having lost his inheritance and citizenship.

"Is it such a difficult question Marion?" he asked, far more gently.

"Why are you asking all this, Robin is an outlaw, he forfeit what little chance of a future we, he, might have had with his foolish actions!" she exclaimed throwing up her hands in frustration.

_"Interesting, nary a soul will call him less than a hero, and she bands him a fool,"_ Gisbourne noted this fact and was forced to reconsider what he knew, what he thought he knew, of Marion.

There were days, far and few between, where even Gisbourne found himself in awe of a man willing to risk it all, _life, limb, land, title, love,_ all of it from some obscure grander purpose.

"And yet he still stirs you, does he not?" Gisbourne asked quietly, his eyes saying he knew the truth.

"He was my first love Guy, the one you never forget no matter what comes after, it was a summer love, it was good, but it ended as all things must and now we are grown and life must go on" she explained resignedly knowing well that Gisbourne likely had no inkling of what she spoke.

He was not a man to speak of love, or encourage it.

"Do you hate him?" Gisbourne asked not looking at her, barely even paying any attention to her though she stood closer to him now than she ever had before. She wasn't sure weather to be insulted or relived.

"What?" she asked, she knew bloody well what he'd said, but her head needed a moment to wrap around it, "For leaving you again, first for the King, then for the People?"

"Yes" she couldn't believe the words leaving her mouth!

Yet it was the harsh truth buried in her heart. A part of her loved Robin, always would, but another selfish part hated him just as much for throwing away what they had, what they could have had, for tossing her to the sidelines.

No matter how just the cause, her pride, her confidence was wounded by his choices.

Everything was a choice, she had told him. Robin had made his.

"How?" this question was what unnerved her, it was like a little boy asking his mother why the sun rose and set. It took her off guard because this was Gisbourne; he surely hated Robin more than any other!

She had no answer, and wondered if she had it weather she aught to give it. This was Gisbourne for Gods sake!

Even if he had been acting strange.

She was saved from answered the uncanny question when a villager ran down the pathway screaming fire. She'd never thought she'd be happy to hear that, but she was all the same.

"Where?" Gisbourne demanded meeting the peasant halfway to the astonishment of Marion, and her father who was watching from the upper room window, she'd have been annoyed with his protectiveness if she wasn't busy staying two steps behind Gisbourne.

"At Berkshire Manor! Everythin' is up in flames my lord, lady! Help us, please I beg of you, our home is all we got in this world!" the peasant woman cried sniffling helplessly, Gisbourne hesitated long enough but agree, "We'll see what can be done."

"We will?" Marion sputtered confused at this out of character offer, "I mean yes, of course we will do all we can" Marion vowed and whistled softly bringing her horse to her side in minutes, Gisbourne raised an eyebrow, "Don't just stand there, get a horse!" she snapped sliding into the saddle, straddling the horse like a man.

Gisbourne hurried to the stable and kicked the poor beast into a fast canter, Marion's chestnut mare already kicking up dust in her wake, headed for Berkshire with all haste.

Gisbourne was quick to follow, after shouting an order for backup from the few guards milling around indolently like absolute dunces.

_"What have I gotten myself into now?"_ he wondered keeping an eye on the back of his lady.

* * *

He was alone and glad for it. He ached in places he didn't know he had, he hurt everywhere even laying still and unmoving in a corner of the room, the stone unyielding and cold.

The guards had undone the restraints binding him to the post in the early hours of morning but he was still tethered, and naked.

Both of which he hated and feared in equal measure. He knew only one thing: if he stayed this kind of torture would break him. Robin could feel himself wavering already.

It shamed him, as much as the men who had used his body as a door mat for their pleasures.

_"I have to escape, god alone knows what's keeping the others but I cannot expect them to save me, I have to get myself out of this mess" _Robin told himself firmly, _"There is a way, I just have to wait for it." _

That opportunity Robin had been waiting on arrived in the form of a pretty girl with curly red hair all done up in pins with a becoming splash of freckles, she seemed a vision to a man who had seen nothing but harsh faced men for going on two days now.

Smiling charmingly wasn't half as hard as he'd feared, but holding it was when her eyes flicked over him in sympathetic understanding.

"Hello" he said quietly, kicking himself _"Hello? How pathetic are you?" _

The girl however found herself approaching the chained man, lounging in the corner. He made it look like he was perfectly at home and the chains were an unfortunate happenstance.

"Hello yerself, mister. What you do to wind up here?" she asked as she knelt down on her knees scrubbing at the bloodstains on the floor trying not to imagine what they had done to this poor soul.

"Nothing" was the put-upon answer she got, was he lying? It wasn't unusual for that spiteful sheriff to lock a person here for no other reason than not liking the color or their hair, but that couldn't be the case here – this one had nice hair.

"You can tell Ally, she won't tell no one," she vowed.

"I'm sure that is so, but its true more or less."

Ally laughed, "Which be it mister, more or less?" she asked flashing him a full smile that he returned and her heart neat to skipped a beat, he had a nice smile too.

"Come a little closer, Ally, and I'll tell you," he whispered, flirting shamelessly with the lass. Ally inched closer carefully. "I won't bite" he teased, "Promise?" she was so serious that his smile slipped a little, "I promise."

The redheaded maiden scooted closer, her eyes widening when she realized he hadn't a stitch on _"As though she hadn't noticed earlier." _

Grinning faintly Robin whispered in her ear watching as her eyes went wide, first in delight, then taking in his situation darkening with horror.

Not the reaction he'd been hoping for.

When Ally quickly left the room, having cleaned the blood best she could, she was still reeling from the news. It didn't seem right, them having done what they had; not knowing what she did now.

That man in there was the Robin Hood!

England had been a darker place before that man had returned from the Holy War, there had been hangings every week, or near to.

Now the sheriff did it less, too much hassle having to deal with Robin Hood and his men every time he tried to hang someone innocent. Ally sighed; he was much better looking than she had thought he would be.

She had expected some war-hardened person with harsh tones and cold eyes. Robin had none of that, his eyes still danced…but for how much longer she couldn't say.

This place sucked the life right out of a body if you let it.

Throughout her musing she never noticed that one of her hair pins was missing until hours later as she scrubbed pots, but Ally never told a soul, she finished her duties and finding a small hidden space dropped to her knees in prayer.

"_God, I know Ally's not supposed to ask yea for favors, but it's not for me. I promise! It's a man here, this Robin Hood, us common folk need him to be free to give to us poor folks and save them innocents that nasty sheriff tries to hang. He's a good man, and this place is no good for him, help him a little please? I know things happen for reasons beyond our understanding…but please…help him? Ally will be good forever, but please don't let Robin Hood die, we need good men like him in England, there are so few. Amen."_

Behind the bolted doors Robin was in good humors whistling softly beneath his breath as he unclasped the chain that tethered him to the bed.

Finally freed of the restraints he uncurled from his position at the floor with his back against the stone and got to his feet, shaky and unsteady as they were he steadied himself on the bed though loathe he was to even touch it.

By the time he reached the doors he'd become acutely away for each lash, every tear, and with them a jumbled flash of what had led him to this.

_Groping hands, hot breaths, clothes cut from his body, and then_…

"Enough" he said closing his eyes against the memories, he didn't have time for this he needed to think of other things, such as the fact that he was still without clothes, which would prove a big problem as he couldn't very well run naked through the castle, that would attract to much attention for one thing, embarrassing as hell for another.

"Option one, wait for guards and take them off guard. Option two…stay here. Option one it is" Robin muttered, and soon enough he heard the booted feet of guards.

With half a mind he hoped that Jamie wasn't one of them.

The guards, dunces that they were, opened the sliding bars from the outside and stepped inside, staring at the empty room with a comical look of horror.

Robin knew they were thinking that Vaisy was going to have their guts for garters but was utterly unsympathetic.

Without a single brain between them they checked under the bed, knocking their heads when the doors clicked shut and the boards were slid in, locking them in.

Robin laughed merrily but it died down quickly, "Still no clothes though…" he muttered looking about for an open room to duck into.

Picking the one to his far right he ducked in, relived to see it was apparently empty. He sighed in relief and began his search for clothes, some breeches at least.

He was comfortable with his body, he had little shame, but he did _not_ like having it on display for one and all.

"Ah, there you are!" a cheery voice exclaimed from behind and arms wrapped around him in a lovers embrace and all Robin could think what, _"Oh no," _as a kiss was placed against his shoulder blade, _"Okay, stay calm, see where this goes. Whatever happens…Do. Not. Panic!" _

"Burke said he was sending me a unique present for my birthday, I had no idea he knew what I liked so well!" the man exclaimed patting Robins' rear affectionately.

"I think there must be a mistake" Robin stammered his face reddening and all he could think was _"Why is everyone in this place mistaking me for a whore?"_

"Come now lets not be bashful!" the man exclaimed with a baritone laugh Robin felt his anger spike, "Bashful?" he sputtered turning a fearsome glare on the laughing man. He'd had enough with these people, these men, laughing, jeering, and sneering at him.

The man cocked his head to the side, "Didn't Burke of Ashford send you?" he asked, finally catching on.

Robin shook his head, "No."

The man sighed, "A pity that, you are so pretty its…unusual. A question then, why are you naked, in my chambers?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Robin heard the guards stomp past, _"Play along damnit, or you are screwed in every way possible." _Robin flashed a tentative smile, going for _bashful._

"Your right" he admitted on a huff looking at the man through his lashes in a way Marion had done when she was younger and trying to get her way with him.

It worked like a charm. So much so that Robin was unsettled.

"You are just full of surprises" the man remarked and his cheer was back, Robin wondered what a man like this was doing looking to a whore – as he thought Robin was – for his pleasures.

He was attractive enough to have had his pick of women, or even young men as seemed his predilection.

Robin tensed when the man frowned, he couldn't have done something wrong already could he? "What's this?" he demanded running a light hand over the numerous lash marks, Robin knew they looked ugly.

"My last…master…" the words choked him like bile, "Was displeased."

"I have no taste for blood, you need not fear that from me" the man vowed with such sincerity it was almost touching, but then he remembered this man thought he was a whore, too.

"What do I call you?" the man asked his breath tickling Robins neck, "Robin" the young man murmured, "Robin. I like that, it suits you" the man commented, his arm snaking around the lean waist.

"So glad you approve" the words were barely above a whisper but dripping with sarcasm, but the man heard, and laughed pleased, "Now I think I know what it is that go you in trouble my young friend."

"Really?" Robin drawled.

"Aye, your mouth!"

"Hmm, but I'm so good with it" Robin retorted knowing he sounded like the cheapest whore in Nottingham talking like this but there was no choice for it, "What do you want to be called…master?" again the word 'master' choked him like the bitterest poison.

The man laughed, "You seem to have an aversion to 'master' so why not just call me by my given name, I'd rather you not die of mortification after all" he said gently, "How kind" Robin murmured, but in an abstract way he meant it.

"Yes, I can be Robin" the man, whose name he still did not know, said a small telltale curve of his lips preceding a grin.

"_I can't hear the guards, I should leave while I still can. But how is the question of the hour? I don't want him sending up the alarm either?"_ with a feeling of alarm he began to think he might have to go through with this, as far as the man wished, _"It could be worse, it could be the sheriff." _

"What is your name? Or am I going to have to beg for it?" Robin queried in a soft soothing tone meant to lull and pacify. "You don't strike me as the begging kind."

"I'm not."

"Why are you then?" the man asked, pinning Robin against the door, rubbing against his hip in a slow easy rhythm. Robin found himself thinking that if he hadn't already been thoroughly, and painfully, fucked over by the sheriff and the two guards he just might have let this man have his way, it had begun to feel good too good, let him have his birthday tumble.

There is also the fact that he had a suspicion that Gisbourne would not be pleased about that. But who knows, maybe he already knew about all of this, and simply didn't care.

That just made for another man who had fucked with him.

"He cant have just vanished, find him! He's here somewhere, I'll give a reward to the one who recaptures the prisoner!" Robins head jerked, body tensing at the sheriffs bellowing on the other side of the door.

"Those bumbling fools make quite the racket, eh?"

"Aye" Robin breathlessly agreed unable to help hearing the hoot the guards gave at the sheriffs mention of reward, one brave soul had asked, "What'll the reward be my lord?" Robin heard the excitement there and winced.

He knew what the answer would be and he wasn't going to like it. "A night with the prisoner, and a fistful of coin, mind that he's still breathing in the morning cant having him dying to soon you know."

"Still with me?" the man asked laughingly, and Robin realized he had been backed into the bed; a few more second and he'd be _on_ it.

_"Damn, no! I can't do this!"_ he thought his mind racing, _"Yes, you can. Man up damnit, don't fall apart now"_ his subconscious snapped furiously, Robin calmed his nerves, _"I can do this, just flesh, skin, and bone and lets be honest this will hardly be the worst of my experiences here. I'll live, humiliated mayhap, but alive all the same."_

"Where…where else would I be?" he retorted belatedly, and the man's shirt came off, and the laces were all undone and before Robin knew what was what he was being pushed to his knees not unkindly.

"You tell me," the man said tilting Robins head up by the chin, "God you have beautiful eyes."

Robin averted his eyes and if his hands were shaky as they undid the mans breech ties he tried to cover it with what was supposed to be a eager smile but he fears came out a little to wobbly and forced.

Banging and indignant screeches could be heard from other less fortunate chambers as unsuspecting inhabitants of Nottingham Castle had their chambers invaded from the sound it seemed a few women had been caught _in flagrante delicto_.

"My names Gideon" the man said and Robin blinked up at him blankly half wishing he hadn't bothered with names, this wasn't something Robin wanted to commit to memory even if the man across from him was striking with his longish raven locks and soft toffee colored eyes, skin a little paler than was fashionable.

He reminded Robin of someone…

Here he was, on his knees, prepared to give the damned man whatever he wanted and they were exchanging names, goes to show how cheap he was that he hadn't even thought to ask for one, _"Because I bloody well didn't want one." _

The hilarity of it was not missed on him and laughter bubbled out against his will.

"You think its funny do you Robin?" the man growled out, a pathetic attempt really Robin had been growled at by people a lot scarier than this man.

He shook his head wordlessly, biting his lip, "It is not your name that amuses me" he said with a toothy smile, "Rather the unorthodox circumstances by which I've been meeting people lately" he explained.

"Oh. So you like my name?" the question was so earnest, that Robin was more than a little surprised. This man thought he was a whore and he was worried that he didn't like his name? Bizarre.

Robin decided to spare the man and give him a serious response, a pity he wouldn't be able to appreciate how rare that was "Its not the name but the man standing behind it which matters most" was what he said, intellectual enough to have earned a surprised, but pleased, smile from Marion.

Gideon laughed, laughed! Robin grit his teeth thinking calm thoughts. "Are you sure you're a wh-" Gideon stopped, his manners deciding to make an appearance.

"I…uh...mean," he stuttered and stammered so bad Robin finally took pity. "A whore?" Robin asked flatly all humor gone from his eyes leaving them icy as a winter's eve, "Only for tonight."

"_Only as long as the Sheriff makes one of me."_

"I'm sorry" the man was stuttering and Robin wanted to sock him, there were some things where a stammered 'I'm sorry' didn't mean a damn and this was one of them.

Robin listened as the man rambled for a full two minutes before it came back to the name of the game.

_Lust._

"But that mouth of yours is driving me to sin."

"_And yours is inches from driving me to murder"_ Robin wanted to snap so badly he could feel the words on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't.

He was a good little whore and kept his trap shut schooling his features into an unreadable expression while offered a weak smile, asking, "Shall I?"

Gideon cursed himself roundly as that glimpse of someone warm and clever that had briefly shone through was shut away behind shuttered eyes.

The person before him was professional, but the smiles didn't reach those lovely blue eyes any longer.

He'd misspoken when the young man hadn't acted, or sounded, like the whore he'd expected and now that he was exactly that Gideon wished for the toothy smile and the pleasant laughter that bespoke of something else.

He was good Gideon concluded, taking his cock all the way lightly sucking, running his tongue over the sensitized skin had him grasping the mans hair in fistfuls with one hand his other at the back of neck holding him in place as he thrust into the firestorm of heat that was Robins mouth.

"God" he groaned, "Yes, yes!" he exclaimed on a husky groan, sparing a moments glance to see blue eyes watching him, and he turned his head away something in those sapphire depths making him unable to meet the carefully vacant gaze.

Vaguely through a haze of pleasure and still rising lust he wondered if the sheriff had managed to snare the famous Robin Hood and he had escaped, yet again.

Gideon was brought back to the present with another sharp suck and his world exploded into bliss, and then it all came crashing down around his ears when the door was kicked in.

Suddenly his Robin was scrambling away, a desperate, wild look in his eye as he backpedaled.

Gideon started in confusion; too disorientated to be embarrassed he tucked himself in and turned a hard glare on the sheriff, who ignored him. Big surprise that.

"Why aren't you the whore today!" the sheriff was exclaiming and Gideon's confusion grew.

"Only for today" he muttered beneath his breath and felt his stomach drop.

_"Robin"_ was no whore, if Robin was even his real name! What had he done?

He watched the scene unfolding with mounting dismay having a suspicion where this was leading. Robin was fighting like they were going to hang him on the spot taking out six of the guards bare handed and naked, he took out half the sheriffs' personal guard in a matter of minutes.

Slamming one out the way he'd come, gouging the heel of his hand into another jugular leaving him sputtering and gasping for breath, and good old fashioned punching another.

"_Good God, he's strong for such a skinny man!"_

But in the end it was all for nothing because more guards had come with the commotion several at a time grabbing hold of him forcing him to his knees before the sheriff, a position he particularly detested.

Gideon stood there his stomach in knots, this didn't bode well and though he wasn't particularly invested he wasn't completely heartless either.

Robin was struggling hard, but they kept him down, all the same Gideon could tell it was taking all of them to do so.

"You've become quite the whore Robin, I'm shocked. What happened to fighting to the death, eh?" the sheriff taunted, Robin spat at the sheriffs' feet in wordless anger his expressive blue eyes blazing.

Vaisy laughed and kicked the kneeling man in the navel making everyman present grimaced as Robin cried out curling in on himself, visibly stifling a choked sob.

"Stop this my lord sheriff! He's just some whore from Nottingham" Gideon said bravely, making Robin flinch and curl further inwards, but Vaisy he laughed uproariously, "You hear that Robin, just a whore, that what you are now."

"_Just a whore?" _He was becoming _just _a little cross about everyone calling him thus. He was Robin Hood, or _just_ plain Robin; he was not _just_ a whore.

"On your feet!" Vaisy snarled, Robin lay still unwilling or unable to comply the sheriff didn't care which was the case.

"Get him up" Vaisy ordered the guards yanked him up onto his unsteady feet were he wobbled before throwing off there groping hands and stood upright under his own strength.

Gideon made for the door, whatever was going to happen here he wanted no part of it.

He was no hero; he didn't even have a sword.

"Not so fast my friend" Vaisy said turning his beady eyes on the retreating man, "Don't you want your reward?" he asked motioning towards Robin who was held face down obscenely bent at the waist over the edge of the bed the scarlet lashes and traces of red staining his thighs making the picture glaringly obvious.

"No" he said making his distain very clear in that one word.

Vaisy shrugged, "Do stay," he said and Gideon knew it was no request.

_"Oh God, how can I watch this?" _he knew what was happening and it sickened him. This man was going to be raped.

_"And I'm going to stand here like a heartless buffoon and do nothing? Think of Elizabeth, man! You do something rash and she'll loose another parent, hold your tongue and wait it out"_ he told himself to excuse his inaction, _"Your no hero, don't do anything foolish." _

"Cant blame him for not wanting to getting dirty Robin" Vaisy was saying conversationally as he ran his hands through Robins silky hair, nails dragging over open wounds, to rest against the bound mans rear, "But you see I'm used to getting my hands, and _other _parts of my body, dirty."

"Go to hell Vaisy" Robin snarled angrily his words muffled from the bed sheet diminishing the effect. "You said that before" the sheriff chuckled, "I'm saying it again you bastard!" he growled in the confines of his mind asking himself, _"How many more times am I to be fucked over before he gets bored? God, this is humiliating...maybe thats the point..."_

"All out of clever remarks? So soon? I'm disappointed in you Robin" Vaisy said absently leaning directly over Robins shoulder to say the words in his ear because he knew Robin hated it, hated him.

"They're wasted on the likes of you," Robin spat knowing that the moment his anger faded his fear would begin to show, but he could only fight a loosing battle for so long, and he was tiring – a forced fast would do that to a man.

Robins gaze flicked over Gideon and his lip curled in disgust, he wasn't going to be any help. Resigned to his fate, for the time being, Robin grit his teeth and tried to prepare himself but there was no preparing for having another mans lust swollen cock rammed up your ass.

There just wasn't.

"Trying to be brave now, are we? Your not talking I noticed, should I have one of the guards put that clever mouth to better uses?" Vaisy gloated and Robin wanted to be sick, "No" he didn't realize the word had escaped until one of the guards young, eager and excited fumbled to position him seesaw like between the sheriff and him, "You put that in my mouth and women will no longer have a use for you!"

This made the guard hesitate, but not Vaisy, "Be good, or I'll tear you so bad you'll bleed to death, don't think I wont" the sheriff said calmly.

Having little choice in the matter Robin let the overeager pup force his mouth open after a few cracks across the cheek and had his cock rammed down his throat making him gag, he nearly choked to death on the spot but got control breathing through his nose.

It was a near thing.

"Good boy" Vaisy crooned petting him, and he nearly bit down he wanted to but restrained himself, barely. The pup never knew how close he came to joining the rank of eunuch.

There were only a few deaths more humiliating that being literally fucked to death, and though he couldn't think of any of them at the moment he was sure the existed.

Trying not to think about what he was doing Robin heard the guard groaning and grunting as he used his mouth like a man used an object, a thing, then he _couldn't_ think beyond –_"It hurts, god, make it stop,"_– as Vaisy was straddling his hips and cold callous hands that couldn't possibly know the meaning of gentle were gripping his shoulders pressing him harder against the guard while jerking his hips back, impaling him in one violent thrust that tore a keening moan from his lips, "God! That's it" the pup was exclaiming yanking at his hair painfully.

Robin wanted to smirk; he was likely deflowering the boy from the sound of it.

The boy was high on pleasure peaking in moments.

That left him with Vaisy who was still thrusting into his tight passage slicked with Robin's own blood.

His vision was getting spotty…he hurt so bad he wanted to die…but he knew he wouldn't. His mind strayed; detaching itself from the painful experience his body was suffering.

_How had this ever been a pleasurable experience?_ He couldn't recall now…but he was sure _someone_ had been good. Who had it been?

It hadn't been _Him_ that had been a complex overlapping between the lines of duty and desire. No, it had been the other, _Gisbourne_, Robin thinks looking back on the one time the ember of something unnamable betwixt them had come to something other than hostility.

_It had been a long trying, if amusing day. Of all the people he'd imagined himself ending up tied to a tree with Gisbourne was not one of them – and yet it hadn't been half bad. _

_They had bickered and bantered all the long day like an old married couple, baiting each other until Robin cut loose his bonds. _

_Somewhere along the way they had become begrudging allies, and before the night was finished they were lovers of the one night only kind. _

_Gisbourne had broke into a smile, the first one he'd ever seen on the mans dour face, it was as though he was transformed and Robin couldn't resist. _

_He kissed him, on the mouth, oh he'd startled Gisbourne alright, but he'd startled himself too, mostly. Next thing he knows Gisbourne is reeling him in with strong unyielding arms and kissing him back!_

_The Gisbourne who wanted to kill him, the Gisbourne to wanted to wed Marion, the Gisbourne who he was supposed to hate, did hate, That Gisbourne was kissing him and miracle of miracles Robin found he was kissing him back. _

_Leaves crackled underfoot as Robin was pinned to the ground, a hand slipping beneath his tattered tunic._

_It would become his lucky shirt, from the night on._

_Hot fervent kisses peppered the hollow of his throat creating a blaze of desire in their wake as Gisbourne tauntingly, torturously worked his way down leaving Robin to writhe in pleasure._

_Huffing in exasperation Robin tugged uselessly at Gisbourne's leathers to which the taller, darker man chuckled murmuring, "Very well" peeling off the clothes until they were both naked and breathless. _

_He'd been talking to bloody much so Gisbourne had threatened to gag him, but he'd proceeded to show him the error of his ways taking his cock in his mouth and working him until he was gloriously undone, Guys' hand buried in his hair, it hurt…but good._

_Robin brought him to such heights Guy became a writhing mass of nerves under his touch. Gisbourne didn't want to use that gag anymore. _

_The tables turned and Gisbourne was pushing his legs apart and he wasn't to cocky any more, a flash of something – not fear never that – went through him he thinks Gisbourne knew but he didn't relent his gentle onslaught of delights whispering his name in a way Robin had never heard I before._

"_Guy" he said back wrapping one arm around his lovers' strong, satin smooth back urging him closer, unspoken concession. _

_"Relax," he was muttering and Robin snorted un-amusedly. _

Robin is certain he's forgetting minute details, things that were said, but he doesn't care, better pieces of a pleasant memory than the agony of the present.

_Touching, kissing, tongues dueling as there swords so often did they fumbled their way to pleasure there on the forest of Sherwood, the twinkling stars standing as witness as Gisbourne came to know how lovemaking was done betwixt men, there was pain but it was brief and quick in passing leaving pleasure to dance through his body in spurts of varying intensity. _

_Gisbourne was thrusting; finding his rhythm as Robin's body gripped him tight as a swords sheath, sweat beginning to dot their entwined bodies. _

_Gisbourne was pressing there lips together to swallow the little sounds Robin was making, he could see they were driving Guy crazy with lust as he thrust harder, faster, working a rhythmic dance as the pleasure built to maddening heights._

_Robin took all of him as Guy impaled him fully, thoroughly, as he climaxed with a hoarse shout, muttering something that sounds very much like "Robin." _

_And when its over and the passion had ebbed back to its usual spark there is no awkwardness, only a comfortableness that is strange for its very existence, but there it was._

Robin makes a small sound a cross between a sob and a gasp as he comes back to the present and the sheriff is still behind him, still in him, grinding against his arse.

The fingers at his waist digging so deep Robin can feel the bruises forming as Vaisy thrusts one last time, deep, violent and painful like he's been skewered from the inside out.

Vaisy steps back and smirks in victory when a small whimper is dragged from Robin who, anything holding him up collapses to the floor wounds old and fresh screaming.

Vaisy sighed, wiping himself off, "Damn, you got blood all over me, again!" Robin didn't say anything couldn't form the words past the rage, the screaming pain, and abject humiliation coursing through his veins.

"Escort Robin to the dungeons" Vaisy said as he did up his ties, the guards stared hungrily at Robin a moment before complying.

Robin spared a sneer for Gideon as he was dragged from the room unable to walk straight as every step was like a shard of glass stabbed into him, he didn't say a word but he didn't have to the accusation shone bright in his wounded eyes as he stumbled past fighting to keep some scrap of his dignity.

Gideon watched the procession with mixed emotions, the predominant one was relief, yes, relief that it was over with and that he could now leave, and he did stumbling his way down the hall doing a good imitation of the town drunk and paler than a ghost all the while sick to his stomach. Gideon was busy tossing up his guts when shouting could be heard.

Robin had found his voice, Gideon wondered if that was good or bad but forced his stomach to stop rebelling as he listened hard:

"You can't keep doing this Vaisy! I'm Robin of Loxley damnit!" the prisoner was shouting as he was dragged to the dungeons, "Oh yes I can, who's going to stop me? Your little band of friends, they seem to be strangely absent. And your Robin of Nothing now, remember?"

Gideon swallowed as something nagged at him; something that refused to let him be a name that his daughter nattered on about a lot.

"Band? Robin…Robin of Loxley…. Robin of…Hood. Robin Hood. Oh god" with nauseating understanding he became violently sick once more. The sheriff had raped _Robin Hood_ and he, he'd been too scared for his own skin to do a damn thing.

* * *

"_Things couldn't possibly get worse"_ he'd thought, _"I can't hurt anymore than I do right now," _he'd thought. He'd thought wrong. They could, they had, he did.

He'd traded the four-poster bed for a hay-stuffed, lice suffused, rat infested cell which wasn't so bad in and of itself, really, it wasn't.

He'd made his peace with the lice, it was the plump little rodents with there beady little eyes and disease carrying bodies that concerned him, rats, dungeons always had them in the hundreds evil little varmints that they were.

He'd whiled away several hours before the Dungeon Master deigned to pay him a visit.

All jailers were unattractive fellows perhaps it had to do with the profession they kept, torturing confession, and executing actual criminals – if there overlord wasn't Vaisy – this man however was particularly unsightly coupled with an alarming habit of referring to Robin as _"my lovely" _this man gave him the shivers.

"_Good Lord! Isn't any one in this castle a lover of women?" _He wondered bitterly, interactions going farther than a manly slap on the back or firm handshake were commonly frowned upon, but then there were the Popes whom had a tendency of keeping company with boys younger than they aught to be, sometimes one never knew with way the law would slide.

"The sheriff says you been a bad boy my lovely" the jailer cackled, "Are you going to send me to bed without supper?" Robin mocked, imitating the churlish voice of a child.

"No, no, now that my lovely would be cruel," the man said with a pat to Robin cheek as though he were a dog to be petted.

"What are the sheriffs orders, pray tell?" Robin asked as two burly guards entered his cell.

Everything in him was screaming at him to _run, fight, act_ but Robin did none of these things opting to stay still and composed as though these men with there hulking bodies stinking of sweat and sex didn't make his skin crawl.

"You can pray if you like, but I doubt your God will be saying much back" the jailer said and laughed loudly, a irritating cross between a dying mans cough and a ravens caw.

Robin wondered what the unpleasant man would do if he told him his laugh alone would be an excellent torture method for extracting false confessions; a faint grin crossed his face as he pictures the absurd scene.

He held his silence knowing well he was in for it without giving the man some wit _Robin-style_.

"What is this the time out chair?" Robin taunted but his smirk was shaky as best, he'd heard about this…Chair.

"Oh, I think you know" the jailer said peering down at Robin with a malevolent gleam in his eye. With the two ham-fisted guards holding him down his hands and feet were bound tight by rusted iron that had likely seen many men come and go from this place of horrors.

All that was left for Robin to do was await the inevitable.

He'd never been good at waiting all the while the jailer was rambling on in gruesome detail about his previous victims until Robin thought he was going to be sick.

How anyone could do such things was beyond him.

"…He wouldn't cleanse his soul with confession the fool, even after all his fingers hand been broken, all mangled twisted lumps of flesh they were! I pulled out the knee splitter and he sang like a canary! They hung 'em the next morn" the jailer was saying with obvious pride, "Why don't we get this done with?" Robin snapped, "Unless I've been brought here to be talked to death?"

The jailer turned purple until Robin thought he was going to keel over, dead. "_Wouldn't that have been nice?" _He thinks to himself, but no, he'd only managed to rile his torturer – just his luck.

"As you wish my lovely, I wager you'll be eating your words soon enough" the jailer vouched with a sickly smile that Robin glared down unflinchingly.

When the chair was tipped backwards and held in place Robin opened his mouth to make another cutting remark but his words died in his throat once he saw the jailer approach brandishing a hot iron fresh from brazier.

"Not so cocky now, my lovely" the jailer taunted beneath the agonized screams of his victim, skin burning, blistering as the sizzling metal was pressed to the exposed sole of his foot, "Not so clever now, are we my lovely?" he taunted searing more soft oversensitive skin, urging another throaty scream, oh but how he loved to hear them scream!

He wasn't begging, but he would be, they all did.

Robin couldn't think straight all he wanted was for this agony to stop, it seemed that he was going to become intimately acquainted with pain for the duration of his stay in Nottingham Castle.

It hurt so back he was certain he blacked out a few times, he'd come to with water dripping from his face, then he had begun again, and again, and again…until his world narrowed down to two things, pain, and the urge to scream and beg, he knew he had done one, his throat rough and scratchy, but he'd not do the other.

Robin Hood didn't beg.

Not even when he _really, really_ wanted to.

Afterward he'd blame it on his stupid pride.

"Come on, not even a little _please_?" the jailer asked lovingly laying down the irons as one would their most prized possession, as he reached for the birch switch lying on the instrument table, "I might be lenient" the jailer offered, Robin knew it for a lie and turned his head away.

His feet hurt so very badly he scarcely felt the horse-switch beating against his feet, closing his eyes he took him mind elsewhere for the duration of the flogging, sparing half a thought for whether he'd be _able _to come back when it was done with.

* * *

"He'd doing it again" she thought with a sharp stab of irritation, for years the man hounded her for the _pleasure of her company_, for a smile, a token of her affection and now that she was warming to him, as much as a woman with her secrets can, he was staring out at the forest of Sherwood.

"_He's thinking of Robin"_ she realized and wasn't sure why it displeased her so deeply. Worry for Robin or irritation at Guy for ignoring her, she couldn't decide which and frankly she didn't really want to know either.

Something's where best left unknown in the end.

She turned her eyes to Sherwood herself and added a mental note to scold Robin for being so scarce; she hadn't gotten even one late night visit or daring afternoon chat with the illustrious bandit.

But then, when he had, she had been less than welcoming; maybe she couldn't fault him his distance this once.

_He didn't know how he'd come to be dreaming, "This is strange, last I knew I was looking out at Sherwood" and in deed he had been, but the scene had shifted and it was no longer the greenery of a forest from Berkshire Manor he saw but miles of open field, tall yellowing and brittle wheat stalks buried the ground, he trampled through it with careful feet. _

_He was looking for something, or was that someone?_

_A strange feeling overcame Gisbourne when he saw someone sitting nearby, only feet away, he hadn't been there before…had he? _

_Reaching for his sword, but finding it curiously absent of his sheath, he approached on cautious feet. He knew who would be looking up at him from beneath that hood; he would know that face, those eyes, anywhere._

_It was Robin. _

_He looked as he always did but in this dreamscape he seemed to have misplaced his weapons too. His Saracen bow and ivory handled sword with its wicked curve were both missing, odd, he'd only twice seen Robin without his weapons first upon his return and the subsequent night spent in the dungeons and of course That Night. _

_It crossed his mind to ask him why, why was he unarmed, why was he here? _

_Wherever here was…He almost asked but the second he began to form the words the illusion, dream, trance whatever the hell it was it began to shift and fade and he caught a glimpse of a feminine face turned in annoyance and a blur of green, which he surmised, was Sherwood. _

"_No" he said surprising himself, he wanted to stay here it was…nice here. _

_It had nothing to do with Robin who had gone back to watching his field, this is when realization dawned on Gisbourne this was the field overlooking Loxley. _

_Gisbourne wanted to speak, to ignite their usual cutting banter he wanted…something. _

_But he didn't. No one could say Guy of Gisbourne wasn't a quick study. _

_No talking was the silent rule. _

_Gisbourne would abide by it, but when he seated himself beside the outlaw he made a point of brushing his arm over one luxurious thigh that's when everything changed. _

_Robin had backed off in a manner Gisbourne had never been witness to before, a cautious look coming into his eye. _

_Gisbourne would have sworn the man didn't have a cautious bone in his body. _

_Right after being surprised Gisbourne was insulted, was even his slights touch unacceptable now? Was that how it was going to be? _

_He grit his teeth and let go his hold of the dreamscape as it began to fade, Robin was sitting, curled was more appropriate but the word seemed inappropriate to Guy, on the ground casting up such a hunted look Gisbourne knew it wasn't meant for him as the field gave way to the waking world were he was staring out at Sherwood, all the while knowing it hadn't been he. _

_He wanted back, to make amends for whatever his blunder, because that look was one he'd never seen in Robins eyes._

"_Robin has never feared me before. He's hated, he's lusted, but never had he feared. But if not I, whom then?"_ he asked of himself becoming more and more aware of a persistent, and suitably annoyed voice, distinctly female, Marion to be exact.

"Guy!" she exclaimed nearly growling with frustration, "Marion" he said slowly testing the words. _"What in Gods name had happened," _he'd never an experienced a dream such as that before.

"Where do your thoughts take you Guy, for they certainly must be far, far away from this simple shire" Marion inquired and if her tone was tart, he assumed he deserved it.

"I don't know, I wish I knew" he sighed giving her an honest look, or what he hoped passed for an honest look. His thought had wandered to Robin, again, but he was hardly likely to tell her that she would be appalled if she knew the true nature of his thoughts.

He was still appalled at himself, but he wasn't denying it anymore.

He liked Robin, he didn't know what that made him, or where it would lead him, but there is was nonetheless.

_"The sheriff asked me to stay and watch Marion and her father, her father more than her, I have done my duty"_ since when had Marion become a duty?

He brushed that thought aside for later reflection, _"I have done what was require. I have to return" _he said to himself, _"And it has nothing to do with Robin, or that Robin is still at Nottingham, or that I have a really bad feeling in my gut." _

Gisbourne nodded to Marion and walked past leaving her to trail in his wake, "Sir Guy? Where are you going?"

"_She hasn't even noticed that he'd been captured. If he were my lover…" _

Gisbourne looked back at her with the first annoyed glance he'd ever throw her way, "I head for Nottingham. I have a feeling…"

He left her to wonder without the slightest regret he knew this to be what a more Christian fellow would call a turning point; Gisbourne just called it the twisted irony of life.

He was going to rescue his rival.

* * *

**Knight Guardian:**_ I've made some minor adjustments to this chapter!_

_Enjoy!_


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

Oblivious to Gisbourne's newfound resolve Robins band were experiencing the beginnings of worry. Robin would absent himself for short times but always, always he'd return before the day was through, giving room for holdups they had waited.

They had fully expected to find him at Berkshire, but he had not shown their either and they had been to busy in their aid of the peasants to fret overmuch about there missing leader.

"He will show" Allan had said with a helpless shrug, Much had not found this a acceptable answer.

"We have done all we can for the shire, now we need to find Robin" Much was quick to insist and he was right they had done all they could, and they really did need to find Robin the man was to accident prone for his own good, and when Allan had said accident prone he meant the kind where a sword was shoved through his gullet or a rope over his head.

However none of them came close to guessing the truth.

All the while Much had taken to hauling around Robins weapons fully expecting to run into his Master somewhere between Sherwood and Berkshire, Much had grown nigh impossible when they hadn't – they had been able to _see_ the worry eating at him it had become to intense.

It was as though they distant whispers of worry had become full-fledged shouts to his ears.

"The sheriff has him" Much said suddenly, causing heads to turn. "What makes you think that?" Djac asked solemnly, "Because!" and says no more knowing full well he has no proof to offer her, only the nagging, gnawing feeling squirming in his gut, "I'm not being funny here but we need more than that before we go sneaking into Nottingham, notice it didn't work so well last time" Allan pointed out with a shake of his head at Much.

"Who else would have a reason to take Robin?" Much asked softly, "I can think of several, Robin isn't exactly a saint and doesn't go out of his way to play nice, you know?" Allan retorted with a shrug that as much as said _'this is his own fault,'_ to which Much readily takes offence in his missing masters' defense.

"He's trying to save people he doesn't have time to make amends with every soul he's crossed, and that is not his way as you well know!"

"Oh, trust me, I know" Allan grumbled, "What's that supposed to mean?!" Much snapped on his feet in a flash, Allan held up his hands in peace, "Nothing, nothing!" he swears.

"Do we know weather someone's caught him?" Will asked suddenly, and everyone shook their heads, "All we have is Much's _feelings_ to go by," Allan drawled sarcastically.

"This _is_ unlike him" Will said implicitly siding with Much, "Is it? All we have is his word" Allan shot back pointing at Much, "And he should know he's known Robin for what five years?"

"My whole life" Much muttered, "See" Will said as though that should explain everything, and Allan supposed it mostly did.

"I don't know…" Allan balked but promptly shut up with Little Johns declaration of, "We go to Nottingham", and so they did.

Much walking at the head forcing the others to choose a faster pace or be left behind, he could feel something wrong that same feeling he'd had when his master had failed to return.

_"Let me be wrong, let me be a worrywart, and mother hen, let Allan mock me till the day I die, but let my master be fit and fine let him call me paranoid and a nag or what ever strikes his fancy but let him be well! 'Tis no small task I ask, but I ask it, I must ask it, because he is my master." _

"He's probably been waylaid, robbing some corpulent noble, or busy wooing Marion" Will said clapping him on the shoulder, hoping that he was right, that Allan was right, and there was naught to fear.

But this was Robin they were talking about and that man never knew a dull moment, Will could attest for that.

It was only by chance that Allan caught sight of Gisbourne preceding them through the Nottingham gate, an agitated look abut him as he all but trampled a few hapless sheep who milled to long in his path, "I wonder what's got his knickers in a twist" he spat with mocking distain while the bandits groaned.

"I could have done without that image, thank you" Much disparaged in deeply heartfelt distaste followed by assorted grunts of concurrence from the rest of the band and Djac's snicker, "He would be a fine-looking man" she suggested to the despair of Will and Allan who stared at her in shock, "if his heart were not black as sin."

They continued to stare at their Saracen companion, of whom they were painfully aware was a woman under her boyish garb.

"What?" she asked with a confused look, "Nothing" Allan said with a shrug, "Its just…you never say stuff like that" Will remarked apprehensively his smoky blue eyes intent and probing, she smiled secretly but said no more.

* * *

He was a coward, a spineless, gutless coward.

The path loomed before him forking in two dissecting roads, he knew which one his conscience, aye he finally had one and he knew whom to blame for it to, bade him follow.

But the coward in him was to set in what was _normal, natural, expected_ dared not tread such an uncertain and perilous pathway.

He'd set out with the intent to rescue an outlaw, to find he needed rescuing from himself!

This was as foolhardy and reckless as he'd ever been in his whole life, and he asked himself the same thing he'd been wondering since halfway to Nottingham, _"What the hell am I doing?"_

He'd told himself playing the hero would win Marion's hand and affections once and for all. He'd told himself it had been really good sex.

He'd told himself Robin would owe him a repeat performance. He'd told himself it had naught to do with caring and everything to do with a convenient body _warm, wonton, welcoming_.

He told himself every excuse beneath the sun, but more importantly he told himself lies.

He was a coward and he knew it well when he began _wishing, praying, hoping_ that Robins band of outlaws would divest him of this horse too that he might leave the rescuing of Robin to them – if they couldn't even save their precious leader what good where they then?

Gisbourne's wishing and praying and hoping came to naught.

No band of outlaws stepped forth from the line of trees demanding his coin, which at this point he'd gladly toss to their feet all the while secretly deeming it their fee for a jailbreak of a most dangerous manner.

Then, and only then could he leave things be with a clean conscience.

But he couldn't because short of searching Sherwood for the men, and he would not go so far as that, he was on his own.

Just like the bandits to be scarce when Gisbourne most needed them it was enough to have Gisbourne growling in frustration his brows furrowing and his mouth thinning to a tight-lipped scowl.

If he was lucky Robin had already freed himself by this time engaging in his usual tomfoolery beneath evergreen boughs and all this fretting was for naught – Gisbourne could live with that ending.

"_Since when have I ever been as lucky as that?" _he grumbled to himself, a mocking "_never"_ echoing loud in his ears sounding so like Robin he spared a backward glance but there was no laughing outlaw on the road behind, and Gisbourne couldn't help but be disappointed.

The long walk from the castle gates to the sheriffs office was not one Gisbourne relished, he dragged his heels much as he dared – later he'd begin to wish he'd run because a minutes difference might have changed all that was to come.

With careful respect he entered letting the great-oaken doors slip shut behind all the while wondering if Vaisy could se his quandary clearly as though it were stamped across his forehead, "You returned sooner than I had anticipated, why? Is you're infatuation with Marion beginning to diminish?" he asked softly trying to lull him into a sense of security no doubt Gisbourne through with hatred, _"How big a fool does he think I am?"_

"You sent me to spy, correct? I did as you asked, there was nothing worth learning at Knighton Manor other than Edward protects his daughters virtue like you your gold" he explained in terms the sheriff would understand.

"Make no mistake Guy, a woman is nothing like gold, gold my young friend is worth something, it will not runaway or stab you in the back it just is what it is which is enough…whereas a woman, well all females are fickle, high-strung creatures as liable to bite the hand that feeds them as a rabid dog" he said whimsically, leaving the rest unsaid but Gisbourne understood and stood in fuming silence.

True his…fixation…for lack of a better word, on Marion was waning but his admiration for her character was not, she was neither fickle not high strung she was damn near dependable for a woman – but Gisbourne voiced none of this, after all he was not that big a fool.

"This is a lovely flower is it not, Gisbourne?" the sheriff said twirling a long stemmed blossom between his fingers with the care usually reserved for his finery and coin.

Gisbourne frowned, shrugging helplessly.

Vaisy laughed at his bewilderment, embarrassing him further.

"With its virgin white petals soft as a maidens skin… mmm…and yet it can kill a man if ingested in to large a dose" he went on to explain, and Gisbourne began to wonder whom the sheriffs unfortunate victim of said flower was going to be.

"Kill, my lord?" Gisbourne mimicked hoping to gleam more information while he could, "Yes, kill, or merely put into a deep sleep, kind of like living death, only not" Vaisy said with a small curving smile that boded ill.

"Oh" was all Gisbourne could stammer, and heartily wished to kick himself, but refrained noting with rousing suspicion the servant that had slipped in unheard and was crushing the petals and dispersing a fair dosage into some poor unfortunates cup, the servant slipped out as silently as he'd come his presence already forgotten to Gisbourne who had more pressing concerns, namely a particular outlaw.

"My lord, I was meaning to ask, have you taken care of the matter concerning Hood?" Gisbourne asked blandly, as though it was of no real consequence one-way or the other – even if it was of great _consequence_.

"Hmm? Oh…_that_. You mean Robin, yes he's securely locked within the dungeons, he's perfectly harmless now I dare say" Vaisy said with a smirk that Gisbourne found most unnerving.

"_Since when has Robin ever been harmless? That's like calling a cougar cuddly, the man has claws." _

Gisbourne had a brief flash of blunt nails scoring down his back, tangled helplessly in his hair…grasping his shoulders – there would be half-moon prints come daybreak, _"Kissing Robin was enough to have me hard and lust-mad, touching him, and I couldn't seem to stop."_

"Gisbourne!" Gisbourne blinked, turning his eyes back to Vaisy who was frowning darkly, "What was so riveting that you didn't hear a word I said?" he snapped tapping his foot expectantly reminding Guy of Marion when she was cross with him, but he knew it would he his execution, not Robins, should he tell Vaisy _that._

"I'm thinking how pleasant it shall be to see Loxley put in his place," he said quickly with a lopsided smile that never reached his eyes but that was okay his smiles never did, and as Vaisy smiled all was forgiven.

"Well come along then, and see for yourself, the imagination only goes so far" the sheriff murmured as one who knows.

Gisbourne followed with mounting trepidation resisting the urge to move faster, instead keeping pace with Vaisy and being his usual nonverbal, boorish self glaring at the dungeon guards, and the meek serving maid, and the page who had, to both their amusement, turned white when he saw the two most feared inhabitants of the castle walking past.

All the while maintaining reserved deference towards the sheriff, again it was to be expected.

He didn't know what he had expected, but it hadn't been this.

Robin was unconscious, and _naked_, bloody welts striping his back some measuring from the smooth line of his shoulder blade to the below the curve of his buttocks, he was _naked_, Guy was having a hard time getting over that little fact.

Gisbourne recalled the feel of impossibly soft skin beneath his hand, bruises painted him purple marring the perfect contour of his face.

If Gisbourne had permitted himself witness all the finger imprints that sullied the ashen skin of Robin's thighs it would have given him righteous fury but instead he turned his eyes from Robin unable to longer bear the sight.

"Wake him" Vaisy ordered of the Dungeon master, "No" Gisbourne said quickly, "I mean, I've seen him. I wouldn't want to but you through the trouble of rousing him" he shrugged as if there was naught more to say, "How considerate" Vaisy purred mockingly, "But its not bother."

And it wasn't, they tossed a bucket full of stale water that was swirling with salt onto the prisoners back, Gisbourne forced himself still when Robin came to on a cut off scream backing away as much as he was able, which wasn't much.

That's when he saw the prisoners feet and turned a few shaped paler himself, _"What have they done to you Robin?"_

When those pained eyes, blue as a summer sky still though shadowed by unspeakable's, fixed on him he felt like the scum of the earth, the lowliest page was in that moment higher than himself.

"To what do I owe…the great displeasure of your company?" Robin grit out stiffly as his body thrummed with agony his eyes flicking over Vaisy then Gisbourne with contempt.

"Still got some fight let, I see" he remarked with a pointed look at the jailer who shrugged helplessly, "You wouldn't want me if I didn't" Robin snarled increasingly aware that they were both clothes from head to toe and he was not.

Vaisy surprised all three of them with a heart laugh, "That probably very true my young friend!"

"I'm not your friend" Robin said quietly his eyes sliding away from the sheriff in memory of what he _was_ to the perverted man, his whore.

"Your in my dungeons, that makes you whatever I want you to be."

Gisbourne could see something here was off, Robin was a trifle to scared, a touch too humiliated for his taste.

There was something he wasn't seeing…he glanced to the side as a hurried patter of feet on the stone floor, a servant was passing a cup of water to the prisoner on the sheriffs urgings, that nagging feeling grew tenfold.

The servant from the sheriffs' office!

"_Poison!" _Gisbourne thought but said nothing and Robin had already downed the vile liquid, and Gisbourne couldn't fault him, who knows when he'd last been offered anything?

"Now what was I saying, oh yes, never forget Robin Hood you are mine, mine to do with as I please, you live or die by my whim, and I say die!" Vaisy said and turned on his heel flouncing from the room not missing the stricken look on Robins face making him smile in maniacal glee.

Subsequently lost in his own power and twisted cheerfulness he never noticed that Gisbourne had not followed.

Gisbourne kicked the bars, _futile_, he rattled him, _pointless_, and he slid down to his knees beside them helpless as a babe in the woods.

There were no witnesses to his outrage but the rats scurrying to and fro, and one outlaw.

"Guy?" Robin gasped out crawling on his hands and knees to where the man was slumped, "I'm too late" he whispered his eyes sliding over Robins body, missing the marks on his soul.

"Uh-huh" was all Robin grunted as he dry heaved his shoulders, and hands, and his whole damn body trembling, "What" panting drowned by a fellow prisoners screaming, "Did he…give me" Robin demanded on a harsh whisper his voice hoarse and raw the words slurring as the poison did its work.

Gisbourne blinked giving Robin a look that he easily deciphered, "Been a pleasure crossing swords with ya.' Tell Marion…loved her well once 'pon a'time, and Much, 'm sorry" Robin muttered, "What makes you think I will?" Gisbourne asked, he _would_ if it was the last thing he did on this earth he _would_, but how could he know that?

"You changed" and that was the crux of it.

"No" Gisbourne said on a grumbled sigh, "I was changed by this insufferable outlaw who plagues my thoughts, he's become my conscience you see" Gisbourne confessed with a small smile, Robins was a desperate imitation a half curling of his lips that fell away as soon as it formed and he fell back clutching his stomach groaning, "Robin!"

But the outlaw wasn't looking at him his eyes were focused on a spot over his shoulder and a chill went down Gisbourne's back.

"Come Guy, leave the poor man to die in peace."

He was torn, and through hazy pain filled eyes Robin knew, or Gisbourne thinks he did.

"Go! Leave me be!" Robin growled out and Guy recoiled as though struck, "Go" Robin repeated quietly, only Guy hearing only Guy seeing, as his hand inconspicuously brushed Gisbourne's, a quick bidding touch, withdrawn before it could ever be acknowledged.

Guy stood frozen to place by his newfound…_something_…unwilling to leave, and yet unable to stay, tarry longer and Vaisy will know he knew this, and so, apparently, did Robin.

"Gisbourne, leave" he said the landless title so quiet like only Gisbourne himself heard wondering all the while if it was wishful thinking to imagine there was a kind of morbid understanding glimpsed in Robins eyes, or was he deceiving himself?

He opened his mouth to say something though he knew not what but the words never came could not come frozen in place with Robin looking up at him through those insanely long lashed his blue eyes already clouded and hazy with impending death, of which there was no revoking.

Gisbourne knew then, in the cold pit of his stomach it's to late for him, for either of them.

"Gisbourne, attend me!" the sheriff was shrieking but Guy barely heard as he looked long and hard, knowing it would fall to him to recount the death of the infamous Robin Hood.

His Robin.

But only he knew that after all who would believe that the gem of Sherwood would spare a glance for the likes of him?

He dragged his eyes from the outlaw and walks out, as though to face his own execution. The waning breaths echoing behind, that sound, soft and quiet, so unlike Robin, remaining long after he's left.

He brushed past the sheriff uncaring if the man took offence.

He walked away bidding goodbye to all that might have been, and the brief shining, glimpse of redemption he'd caught sigh of lurking in Robins fierce glare the first time they'd met.

As he walked away he bid his heart to stop its complaining, he did not care, he didn't!

And there was no dagger wedged in his heart in that small, _insignificant_, space were his memories of Robin were secreted far and deep from prying eyes.

But most of all there was no tear, _unbidden_, sneaking from the corner of his eye. Men don't cry, and Gisbourne was very much a man, a man who had most definitely _not_ loved Robin Hood.

He was dead, and that was that.

"Robin Hood, former Lord of Loxley, Earl of Huntington is dead!" the town crier announced in a voice both loud and quaking, a hush spreads through the square and the whispers are so numerous they become as like on huge hum of noise.

Through all this no one hears one mans beseeching cry of denial, "No! I cannot be, 'tis a trick!" he shouted and kept on saying, his comrades discouragingly silent, "My master, Robin, cannot be dead, it cannot be."

"Gisbourne will know if it is true, or a trick" Will said somberly his smoky eyes going hard as granite, "He is the sheriffs right hand man, he will know."

Allan nodded, "And if it 's a trick 'ow are we gonna get him to admit it, 'e's not gonna jus' say _'hey your comrades alive no worries mates'_ y' know?" Allan said posing a valid point that John answer wordlessly by cracking his knuckles with a truly feral look in his eye and they all smirked wanly, Gisbourne would talk.

"Okay, now how do we catch 'em?" Allan asked aloud, they all shrugged but Much whose eyes had been seeking out the man most likely to know the truth exclaimed with a excitement none of the rest shared, "There!"

Much told himself it was because they hadn't known Robin like he did.

He couldn't be dead, he refused to admit it, it couldn't be so, Robin was Much's world, and one without Robin…he shuddered, _"Best not think like that"_ he chided himself. All would be well.

It was shockingly easy to sneak up on the leather clad man, he seemed to be walking in a daze, if the idea wasn't so absurd Djac would think that man had just lost his best friend, a prized heirloom or horse was more likely she thought cynically putting aside the crazy notion.

Gisbourne didn't _have_ friends anyway.

Gisbourne swung around in surprise to find himself beset by Robins little band of friends, _"Now they show up,"_ he thinks uncharitably remembering how badly he'd wished for them neigh an hour ago, so long it seemed now.

He Threw back his head and laughed, priceless, "No you're here" they hear him muttering, likely they think him mad.

He doesn't care.

"Is it true? Tell me, have you killed my master?" the blond one wearing the ridiculous bandana is shouting pinning him to the stable wall with a strength he hadn't expected, he wondered if he was to be killed for a second but dismissed the thought when he looked into anguished blue eyes, the eyes of an honest man, Robins little servant was no killer.

"He said he was _sorry_" Gisbourne said quietly staring down at the blond impassively, wrong thing to save, a knife was at his throat now.

Maybe this one wasn't as simple as he'd thought.

"What?" Much demanded the blade pressing close, dangerously close, Gisbourne noticed that the others were still as stone, shock, understanding, and rage written in there faces.

Gisbourne shrugged cavalierly saying, "Don't kill the messenger."

_Really_ shouldn't have said that, blood seeped down to stain his collar.

"It was not I, if you want to kill someone _Much_, kill the sheriff" he snapped pushing Robins friend off him, "You were part of it!"

Gisbourne didn't bother with a denial.

Much is kneeling at his feet now, the others clearly expecting him to kick him while he's down close in around him a look in there eyes promising sticky retaliation if he does.

Once upon a time he would have, but he cant now, not with Robins voice in his head, his image burned into his mind.

"I will kill you, I will!" Much is raving but the tears streaming down his face ruin the threat, "He killed my master…he killed Robin!" Much shouted and Gisbourne could feel the grief rolling off him like a living breathing thing, and Gisbourne felt something even more alien than the unnamable ache in his chest, _sympathy._

Allan kicked at the hay, quietly reprimanding the grieving man, "I know yer gerievin' mate, but we cant be attractin' attention like this."

Gisbourne wanted to tell him to shut the hell up and let the man rave, he deserved it, but that wasn't the matter in question.

They believed _that_.

"We go now" that was the big silent man who was throwing him some scary looks, if they hadn't been Robins men he knew he'd be dead.

"But he killed him!" was the little blonds forlorn exclamation like a child unwilling, unable to accept the facts that lay before him.

"It will _not _be forgotten" John said with a dark look at Gisbourne before physically hauling Much up by his collar and they were making good there escape leaving Gisbourne to his own grieving, purely out of respect for a truly exemplary opponent of course, _"Keep telling yourself that"_ a voice not unlike the sheriffs whispered in his head, he ignored it.

Gisbourne finds himself hiding in a haystack as mobs of peasants come crashing into the stable, all in an angry frenzy and hopeless despair, their hero is dead they are each alone now, and know it well.

There will be no heroic rescues from the hang mans noose, no food left on the step of there huts, nor coin pressed to there hand afore the tax man cometh.

The town crier has announced the news and it spreading through all the surrounding shires like a wildfire.

'_Robin Hood is dead!'_ they all say in that same despairing, disappointed tone at the loss of a man that was more than a man, because he was a hero, now even in the eyes of his mortal enemy. _"Robin Hood, Robin of Loxley, Robin of Sherwood, my Robin…gone, dead."_

As he lay there waiting, thinking, it was almost more than he could bear it was inconceivable – a world without Robin.

Gisbourne stays there for hours mutely waiting for the panic to die down, for the peasants to resume the endless toils of their days.

Life without _Him_ will go on, the sun will shine, and the world will turn _"And the sheriff will rule, again." _

He will fade from there minds, when asked of the bold outlaw who defied the sheriff, _for them_, who stole with impunity, _for them_, they will say Robin _who_?

"_Will I forget?"_ he asks himself part of him hoping he _will _the other knowing he _wont _as he sits conjuring Robin as he knew him first all charming insolence forgiven so readily with but a smile and kiss.

Those eyes, before the poison was a gleam in the sheriffs' eye, _he_ would never forget Robin. How could he when he sees the color of his eyes every time he looks into the summer skies, bright and eternal?

_"How can I, with his image imprinted on my traitorous heart?"_ he did not wish it so, but it was all the same and that was that.

He, _Guy of Gisbourne, _had loved an outlaw.

"_Hindsights a bitch,"_ Gisbourne thinks aloud the words escaping on a harsh growl as he storms through the stable doors, a young guards jumps in surprise darting out of his way, he thinks his name is Jamie, but shoved past him his mood black as the night sky above. _"Of all the people in the world I had to fall for my worst enemy,"_ familiar mocking laughter echoes in his head, but he doesn't look back.

Robins dead.

_**Knight Guardian:** What'cha think? I hope I didnt over do it? Did I? Please let me know what you think! R&R! It pleases my Muses!_

_Thanks._


	7. Chapter 7

"_So this is the feeling that steels over the heart in the quiet times of dark and dawn, so this is what it is to love"_ Gisbourne thinks bitterly adding, _"And what it is to loose." _

Now he knew the feeling that had been steeling over him so quietly for what _days, weeks, months_ perhaps?

_"I buried it so well denied it so hotly, thinking myself so clever, I never saw the forest for the trees!"_

Gisbourne ground his teeth wanting to pound something but he was home in Loxley and he drew the line at terrorizing the people that would be responsible for serving his meals.

"_Death stole Robin, and with it goes that something I'd searched for with Marion, for whence I look upon her face again all I'll see is my own bigotry and blindness" _Gisbourne said to himself with no small anger, _"And how dearly its cost me."_

The inconsolable man stared up at the ceiling of his room, _Robins room_, but could find no rest his memory lay strong here in this place he must have whiled many hours of sleep – _soft lighting casting him gently aglow the dark arch of his brow and the lush upturned pout of his sultry lips, the narrow waist made for gripping smooth and hard, the curve of his arse looking delicious as any peach_ – he sighed beneath his breath, a haggard drowning sound as he choked on memories of the one night he could not forget, and now he knew why he wouldn't, couldn't.

He refused to let it go, and when he asked himself why, he knew the answer.

It was one of the very few good things he'd ever known, and that it had been shared with his enemy mattered little in hindsight. After that night he'd felt clean when he knew he should have felt sullied, sinful, unclean, but he didn't of all the regrets he secretly harbored that wasn't one.

And if indeed a sin it had been, that was one he'd in no way repent, _ever._

_"That he would actually die…that thought never even crossed my mind, ridiculous but true,"_ Gisbourne himself had begun to think of Robin as the un-killable, an immortal crusader of the people.

"_And what good did it do him, working for the people, doing all the right things?" _the sheriffs voice whispered mockingly in his ear, _"It made him a hero, but did they thank him, did God spare him for his good works? A clue, no!" _

In a fit of temper he considered burning Loxley to the ground, all of it!

Let nothing remain of the man – the hero turned outlaw – who had inhabited these lands, walked these halls, mayhap that would free him.

"_Is that not everything I've wished for? Freedom of Him?" _

He was freed, and he found his freedom lacking. He began wondering, thinking, if he did this act might not Robin be there to stop him before flint set to fire, might he not be here to save Gisbourne from himself – again – it was an even more ridiculous thought than Robin being un-killable, he'd only been a man, and now he was a dead man.

_"If there are such things as specters and ghosts, this certainly will have Robins haunting me from now till Kingdome come for committing such a thoughtless, heartless action against 'his' people" _Gisbourne mused with a tilted half-smile that was witnessed only by the empty night.

He pictured himself doing it.

Calling for torch and fire with the desperate wailing of the people piercing his ears with this endless whining over a cluster of timber and land, as though _they_ were loosing a loved one, not just an inanimate object that could be easily enough rebuilt.

Not a living, breathing person, _man_, not something, _someone_, irrevocably irreplaceable. Not someone who had lived and died for there hopeless cause.

Gisbourne almost did it because even the ghost of Robin was better than nothing of him at all, _"All it had taken was him dying for me to see." _

Gisbourne knew himself to be no sorcerer, no black arts conjurer to reverse time or raise the dead, but he would if he could and the sanctimonious double-speaking Church, the Sheriff, and all the rest bedamned.

But he couldn't!

He'd sell his soul to have that knowledge, but he feared not even the Devil himself would want this soul any longer, tarnished cracked thing that it was, if he even had one. _Robin was his conscience, was he his soul too?_

There again was the other reason, Robin would never forgive him, ghost or man, for setting afire all he had once loved and fought so desperately for – this alone stayed his hand.

Gisbourne buried his head in his hands, he hated all this thinking but he could not stop the thoughts all rattled in his head and he could not be rid of them, they refused to be budged like glass buried in the skin, they had to be pulled free and set aside to examine the wounds they left in him, great gaping empty spots.

"_As a boy I was the butt of jokes an innocent fool, and again I've played that role to perfection as a man, sans the innocence"_ he realized full well it would never have been lilies and roses betwixt them.

But it could have been better…_nights with lust, desire, wanting, running hot in their blood, tangled legs, entwined bodies, and the feel of His breath warm and heady against naked skin…_

_"I will get no sleep this night here in a room still smelling of Robin, forestry, earth and something else…"_ the room echoed of choices unmade, words unsaid.

An eternal reminder that they never would with the true master laying in some shallow dug grave by callous, uncaring hands, damnit all he hadn't even been able to give him a proper burial, a heroes wake as it were.

He'd deserved that much.

"The man is dead and still he is all I can think of!" Gisbourne grumbled just knowing that somewhere _'up there' _Robin was laughing his ass off at this whole affair, at his expense, again. Rolling free of the bed and its tangled sheets in one move already down the hall and out the door before he'd quite realized he had nowhere to go and his shoulders slumped and he walked aimlessly till he came to an oak in the middle of the wheat field, all dried yellow stems just like in his insane daydream…

Gisbourne leans back against the tree staring up at the starless sky and tried to summon a memory, a good one, that _didn't_ involve a particular outlaw but all he conjured was a great big blank.

* * *

It was with ever dragging feet and what was becoming an eternal scowl that Jamie reported for his duty in the lower dungeons. He hated that place with loathing enough to rival Gisbourne's known hatred for Robin Hood.

But that wasn't an issue any longer, because the outlaw was dead.

Jamie sighed cursing the sheriff, not because he cared one whit, but his younger brother had been heartbroken Jamie could remember all the times he's claimed with such childish pride that someday he was going to be _'Just like Robin Hood!'_ at the time he' rolled his eyes and grinned indulgently, _'Are ye now?',_ he should have discouraged him from the very first but he hadn't the heart to break his brothers juvenile dreaming, at least he had something to dream about…

Nowadays all Jamie dreamt was of prisoners screaming and blood pooling at his feet, when he woke he always scrubbed his hands, but the blood never left, it was the aftertaste in the back of his mouth, and he loathed the sheriff for that too.

Jamie set to cleaning his charge grumbling under his breath, it seemed he was to play nursemaid, again, as if there weren't other better things to occupy his time.

No, the sheriff had to send him down here to look after these riffraff.

Burying his first inclination, _sympathy_, he brought the damp cloth to the man fevered brow knowing he might never wake and sending up a silent prayer that it would be thus.

The _cardinal flower_ was a dodgy poison to which there was no definite remedy to repel its toxins, Jamie wonders if it might not be best for the poor man to just let go and die.

It was a cruel thought, but whatever lies beyond is surely kinder than the agonies he is suffering here, this man had become the sheriffs' favorite and those never lasted long.

_"This unlucky criminal is likely no more'n a petty thief…but then, there are those who've declared Robin Hood himself as no more'n that. A petty thief as this excuse of a man…not likely." _Jamie shook his head of such foolishness, this man was no Robin Hood nor could he ever be, it was nigh impossible the vary thought inconceivable _that outlaw_ wouldn't have been subjected to such indignities, only a swift execution, wouldn't he?

Doubt lingered like an ugly image in the back of his mind, but he ignored it with a will.

His charge had acquired more marks he noted with exasperation, ugly lashes still fresh upon his back blood clotting unattractively and the bruises dotting his body helped not at all painting him black and blue, "What'd you do, eh? That's what I'd like to know" Jamie mumbled looking Robin over with a clinical eye.

Jamie was no healer, he was just another of the sheriffs hired guards, but this man could do with the use of one. Even as he inspects the damage done to the prisoners' feet – and its bad, real bad – he's studiously ignoring the glaringly obvious one because the thought of _that_ unmans him.

He cleans the prisoner off taking away the blood and grime and dirt only to find himself musing that _maybe, maybe_ he sees something of what the sheriff does in this plain and otherwise ordinary man, disturbing as it is.

It was the power thrill of lording it over this man who had fought him at every turn his eyes becoming twin pools of blue fire with each cleverly managed retort, it's the breaking Vaisy relishes. Jamie ponders this knowing that he's been overanalyzing a situation that's probably far simpler.

The sheriff decided to make an example of this man to deter others, simple, clean-cut.

"Who are you anyhow? Do I even want to know?" Jamie muttered with a shake of his head but his charge is dead to the world. The sheriff had said it could be a long time afore he woke but Jamie was hopping it would be sooner rather than later.

The complete stillness of his unclothed body strewn out on the musty straw was becoming more than he could stand.

The prisoner looked as though he slept but for the eerie kind of stillness wrapped around him like deaths cloak.

He woke to screaming, the jailer was at it again with a different prisoner this time, funny he thought torture was used as a means of confession, there was no confessing only bloodcurdling screaming, he sighed saying quick prayer for the condemned soul before he turned to find dull blue eyes staring at him blankly, "You're awake" he stated unenthusiastically, "Just as rather not be" Robin hissed forcing himself to sit up drawing as far from the guard across him as possible he didn't see a young man wanting to be kind, he didn't see a young man who wanted to flinch with each mark on him, all he saw was another guard that had free reign of his person.

"Here" he said gruffly tossing his cloak at the prisoner who promptly threw it over his lap but stuck to the far side of the cell as though he thought…as though he thinks I would do _that_!

Jamie can't decide weather to be angry or insulted, so is neither, _"From the looks of 'em he has the right to be wary." _

Jamie stuck out his hand, feeling like a fool, "I'm Jamie."

"_Great now I've formally introduced myself to a criminal." _The criminal was squinting trying to recall him, was he really that forgettable?

_"He was distracted when you met if you'll recall, being whipped and then that other thing"_ Jamie reminded himself sharply.

"I remember" was all he said, not that Jamie had been expecting a heartfelt reminiscence just a complete sentence of more than two words.

"What news is there from the outside?" the criminal was asking, followed by "How long have I been here?" he only answered the first, frowning when he thought of the death of the hero, even if it was a dubious one.

"Robin Hood's dead, the town crier announced it the other evening" Jamie wasn't sure what reaction he expected but a bout of laughter, an amused glare, followed by a mocking "I'm not dead," wasn't it.

'I'm not dead' he says it as though he's supposed to care, as though this revelation explains everything maybe the man had gone mad? He'd seemed lucid.

"How has the one to do with the other?" Jamie demanded out of bored curiosity that earned him a harsh bark of laughter that sounded like it hurt the prisoners throat for he quickly stopped giving Jamie a bewildered glare, "I'm Robin Hood."

Jamie laughs unable to help himself, "And I am King Richard!" he grunts between laughs, "Really, I am" Robin insists without hesitation, the lack of hesitation almost wins Jamie but he shakes his head in denial.

"I'm sorry but the sheriff would not risk rebellion, and loosening control of the peasants, by keeping Robin Hood as a…_plaything_ for his baser pleasures, 'twould be idiocy" Jamie said feeling like a right git as the prisoner cast his eyes to the floor muttering, "Not if everyone thinks I'm dead."

Jamie refused to believe this, it was impossible, and "Robin Hood was a Crusader, Captain of the Kings Guard I hear tell."

"And you don't suppose I could be a Crusader?"

"Not that Crusader, no"

"Why?" Robin asked, Jamie refused to look at him ducking his head in mortification, "Why not damn you!" Robin roared refusing to let the lad slide free of this one.

"Because…he'd never have been well…you know!" Jamie demanded turning scarlet but this time Robin refused to duck his head in shame, he'd been tied down and forced into submission as the sheriff fucked him bloody, it hadn't been his fault it hadn't!

_Had it_?

"Indeed I know very well!" he snarled with fresh remembrance and all the fight left him, leaving him cold and empty inside. Maybe the lad was right.

"Maybe I'm not Robin Hood, I'm not of Loxley, because that's now Gisbourne, and if I'm not that than how can I know I'm even Robin?" he slumped down in uncertainty.

Jamie taken aback and confused says nothing.

"_I'd never thought of myself as that anyhow, the people called me that as they call Marion the Night watchman."_

"If I'm not Robin Hood, or Robin of Loxley, or perhaps Robin, who then am I?" he asks Jamie with such a look that the guard wishes he'd kept his trap shut he hadn't meant to make the man this…_confused_, or so crushed for that matter it seemed wrong to see him thus with all the fight gone out of him, like without that fire he was just a shadow of whoever he was supposed to be...

"My whore" two heads turned as one, and blue eyes darkened with a mix of shame and anger, he shook his head in silent refusal.

The sheriff smirked, "Oh yes, and now its time for you to earn your keep!" he announced, "You see my men are tired, and hungry, it isn't fair to sent them home to there wives so…energized…not when for a spare coin or two they can have you now."

"I'm not your whore Vaisy that you can loan me out to your men for a few coins! I wont make this easy," Robin vowed, "Oh I know, but you see they like it when you fight. They don't want a sack of potatoes that lies there like a corpse!" he explained laughing mirthfully at his prisoners torn look knowing full well that Robin would fight, he would _always_ fight, and it would be impossible for him not to do so. Robin stared the sheriff down refusing to bend beneath the darkening of his eye or the tightening of his mouth.

He was not some pawn to be played with, he was no mans possession, and he refused to be this mans whore.

_"Whatever I may be I refuse to be that!" _he thought vehemently, even as he knew that were was no halting the sheriff from using him as one, and he would, Robin knew it. "Ah look here comes your first customer now" the sheriff said with enough cheer to fill a Cathouse.

Vaisy smiled cruelly setting a small black box across from the cell, and when a handful of coins clinked home it sounded loud as a shattering, _soul_, plate on an unbending ground.

He didn't know the mans name nor did he ask it, he didn't care.

There were no words Robin weary of them, the man to determined on _grabbing, groping_, with long fingered hands to pale to be a guardsman who saw too much sun…he had the looks of a cloth maker about him Robin realized.

With little effort he was flipped onto his stomach, "Aren't you a quiet one today" the man growled slobbering disgustingly wet kisses on his neck, Robin fought him wordlessly catching him across the jaw, with a solid right-hook sending his _'customer' _reeling back.

"He does have spirit!" the man grunted to Vaisy who was standing idly by, watching. The cloth maker had the upper hand grasping the prisoners hands behind his back and slamming him against the iron bars relishing the agonized gasp that followed from there it was over, held immobile Robin grit his teeth and rode it out turning his head away that he might not see the sheriff standing inches away with a very contented look on his face, this wasn't over yet.

Robin sank down to the floor the moment there backs turned and he saw left with himself, he wasn't sure how much more of this…_humiliation_…he could take but what choice was there?

Everyone thought he was dead.

Maybe he was.

* * *

_**Knight Guardian:** To those that have read, many thanks, ideas, suggestions, thoughts are all welcome as usualy, seeing as my Muses are begining to grow bored with me at this time! Please R&R!_

_Thanks._


	8. Chapter 8

The castle was cold on mornings such as these making the stone floors feel like ice to the touch, how one could stand to sleep upon it he would never know, _"Though 'taws hardly by choice for those that did." _

It had been many months now since the town crier had heralded the death of the peasantry's hero.

His little brother had been inconsolable; vowing that when he came of age he'd avenge the outlaw.

Jamie hadn't known weather to laugh or to cry.

He pressed on down the halls, glad to not come across Gisbourne who'd only grown darker at the death of his rival Robin Hood, Jamie would have thought he'd be more pleased. Gisbourne stalked about the castle as usual, but the one time Jamie had chanced to look him in the face he'd been overwhelmed with the sheer darkness emanating from his person, everything about him shouting _back off, or die_.

Jamie hurried in the opposite direction and _never ever_ looked up when they brushed past each other in the halls.

There was no sound from the cramped cell, there hadn't been for some time now, no more witty remarks or fierce glares just this depressing resigned air proved with slumped shoulders and bowed head.

The man rarely said much of anything nowadays, it had taken some getting used to, this silence when before it was all he could do to shut him up.

But the sheriff was pleased.

Immensely.

Jamie just thought it was wrong, whatever misdeed this poor fellow had committed couldn't have been worth this living hell that Vaisy had thrust upon him – when he came to clean up the mess the guards left the mornings after he sometimes thinks death would be preferable to this mockery of a life.

"Good morning."

Silence.

"Its rather nice today."

"I wouldn't know."

A reply at last!

"I was beginning to think you'd lost your tongue!"

_Oops_, Jamie realized his mistake to late as the criminal flushed unbecomingly gritting out "No, the sheriff likes my tongue to much to cut it out" shoulders slumping even more if that's possible, "For now."

"I'm sorry" Jamie whispered knowing how empty an apology could fall even if he was sincere.

"What for?" the man asked turning away so he didn't have to see the pity shinning in the young guards eyes the scrap of pride he had left wouldn't stand for it.

"Why does the sheriff do this to you?" Jamie asked not for the first time, and as always the criminal just shrugged a strange smile, almost like the one that came so easily in those first days here, tugged at his mouth and he merely shook his head his back still to the boy there was no point answering.

He wouldn't believe him, and why should he.

Apparently in the minds of the people _Robin Hood_ never got caught, he didn't bleed, he didn't scream when pain battered at his senses more than he could stand, Robin Hood didn't take it up the arse like a whore.

Apparently _Robin Hood_ was infallible.

So, in a way, he wasn't _Robin Hood_ anymore, was he?

He did bleed, he did scream.

He was…the sheriffs plaything, the guards worn out toy…he was just a prisoner the sheriff enjoyed whoring out to any who'd pay.

"Fine, keep your secrets" Jamie muttered, not really disappointed, this was the game they played each time he asked, the prisoner always refusing, there was consistency in this when all the rest of Nottingham seemed to be going up in flames, figuratively speaking of course after all without Nottingham Vaisy would have no one to tyrannize.

"On your stomach with you" he said motioning towards the prickly mat that Robin had been given, far to small even for a man of his slight stature.

Jamie hated it when the man was sleeping when he'd come for this morning ritual, who'd of thought this man could look so small and broken as he slept curled up tightly, arms tucked beneath his chin preserving some small measure of body heat.

Jamie knew that one of these days he'd walk in and there'd be nothing to fix, or there'd be something he couldn't.

So he hated it when he walked in to find Robin sleeping like the dead, hair hanging over his face nearly obscuring his eyes, not that he ever looked at them anymore.

His eyes, blue like summer skies once upon a time were now dark and shadowed like winter without hope of sun.

They were as broken as the mans pride, showing the scars on his soul that his body hid.

Robin did so without hesitation and Jamie cleaned off the few welts that striped his back, not so many this time thankfully, just a few bruises that shone like a beacon on Robins to pale skin.

The mans skin rippled and trembled with each brush of the cloth, and touch of his hand but Jamie didn't take offense – it was a reflex.

Not once had touching brought anything but pain for the prisoner for so long that he'd almost forgotten what it was to be touched and want it, to be touched and not be left writhing in pain, to be touched and not feel shamed.

Jamie had only barely finished cleaning the blood when he heard the telltale sound of coins dropping into a box and his blood ran cold, a shiver running through his body.

"_Oh God, already?"_

"I'm not done!" he hollered out to whomever stood on the other side of the door. Robin got his feet, chains rattling in the silence of the room, the only sign he giving way his distress was the hitch of his breath. The door flung open and in stomped some strange man with string hair and pale blue eyes, "Get gone boy, I paid, now I wanna see if it was worth it."

The way the man was sizing up Robin made Jamie want to punch him, it also made him want to throw up, God, how much longer would this go on?

How much longer could he take it?

"I'll come back later Robin,"

"No rush Jamie, I doubt I'll be going anywhere."

A hint of the old Robin was in his voice, a touch of mockery lacing the words and Jamie walked away hoping that it would still be there when he returned.

The door slammed shut behind, and he went about his other duties.

Once he had hated being set this task, and he hated it still because another mans suffering was not something he took pleasure in, he was no Vaisy, but worse yet he _liked_ Robin.

How that happened, he didn't know. But by God did it make things worse!

Sometimes when he looking at Robin, he thinks he sees someone good, someone honorable, someone like _Robin Hood_ must have been before the sheriff went and killed him.

And sometimes, he remembers his Robin telling him he _is_ Robin Hood, and occasionally he thinks, maybe, possibly he wasn't lying.

* * *

_**Knight_Guardian:**_ _Its been a long time, my apologies but my Muse left for a while. If anyone is still interest please let me know. If anyone has any ideas on where this should go let me know and I'll take it into consideration because my blot bunnies are evaporating quickly...so yeah. Thanks for reading, and please review, let me know what you think, like it? Hate it?_

_Thanks._


	9. Chapter 9

The truth didn't come in slow measures and easy increments, it came down like a downpour of hail, like a sledge hammer to the back of his head with double the force backing it.

_The truth hurts_, and after this day Gisbourne would remember it well, though the day would blur in some moments the harsh reality of day would remain clear as crystal burned into his memory evermore. The day had begun innocuously enough, as all days of consequence do, just another rainy, wet, and cold Market Day.

Peasants shuffling about the selling stalls in there tattered rags like nervous mice ready to run at first sign of the cat, it was almost enough to make Gisbourne laugh, and precious little did that these days.

With naught to entertain him Gisbourne shouted for a drink, watching with merciless eyes at the poor serving wench trembled in fear of him setting down his cup and curtsying out the door in all haste. The servants had been walking around him like trading eggshells ever careful to avoid his eye, fear bright in there own, and they had reason too the wretches.

A black cloud hung about him like a premonition of death.

Sinking back into his chair Gisbourne closed his eyes, sipping his mead, it tasted like piss but feeling magnanimous he let the serving wench be. It would take to long or her to fetch more anyway – hardly worth the effort.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. _

"What in damnation is that racket?" he snarled hurling the cup against the wall watching with disinterest as the broken shards scattered across the floor, a painful trap for unwary feet.

Deep in his cups, deep in his dark thought that never gave him reprieve he imagined what witty, mocking line He would have given to such a worthless, wasteful, act of pettiness.

"_Throwing pottery now, eh? How juvenile Gisbourne! What next, a tantrum perhaps?" _He might've said with that laughing mockery Gisbourne loved to hate.

On maudlin days such as these when the weather was as cold and damned as he felt Guy wore a dead mans token about his neck like a guilty pleasure. The only one left to him in a world with nothing to hate, and even less to love.

_Thud. Thud. Thud. _

"What the bloody hell is that racket?" Gisbourne ground out between clenched teeth, could he not even drink himself into oblivion in peace?

Lurching to his feet he barged into the adjacent chamber and froze, standing in the middle of the room blinking his eyes like a drunken fool.

For a sparse second his heart leapt, stupid sentimental thing, before it nary shrank to the soles of his feet. In that instance of revelation many things flickered through his mind but the most telling was an anger that burned so hot it turned his blood to ice in his veins.

"_It cannot be," _was the only thing he could come up with as he stalked down the hallways lost in his own nebulous haze of anger and disbelief scattering servants and guards alike. He wasn't drunk enough to mistake this for a garish nightmare, that had been Robin.

He swore in the name of the King and God, and his own life there would be hell to pay as a murderous rage worked over him holding his heart in a viselike grip so tight he could barely breath.

"_Thud, thud, thud as the headboard banged against the wall the sound echoing ominously paired with harsh grunts and crude pants that came in tandem to small pained whimpers. _

_Two bodies entangled on the bed._

_Gisbourne had first curled his lip in disgust then in horror when he looked, really looked at the slim, lithe figure held down with brutal force as the guard took his pleasure without regard. _

_The bastard had Robin splayed out like a banquet his hips forced into a harsh rhythm that Gisbourne knew had to be God awfully painful his slightly-to-long hair sweaty, the pale skin of his throat unwillingly bared in surrender, his head forced to the side as the man bit down…and then he was looking at him, right at him his eyes empty and blank as though this were some nightmare, and Gisbourne wasn't even here._

"_He's alive…at least." _

_Feeling elated, and sick, and useless all at once Gisbourne had hurried from the room feeling first numb and then slowly as the shock cleared, furious. _

_That was Robin, his Robin chained to the bed like a damn dog at that cur fucked him like a bitch in heat._

Gisbourne shuddered, the only thing he loved more than Robin's sarcastic wit, and beautiful lithe body, were his eyes. Gisbourne knew he was done for when he could say he'd die a happy man if they were to be the last thing he saw of this earth.

They were warm, always warm, even when burning with hate then they were hot and searing hard to meet as they drilled into you as though looking into your very soul and judging you unworthy - but never, _never_ like this so cold and empty and dark like _his_, like _Vaisy_, like every other man Gisbourne had ever known growing up. Robin alone had eyes as blue and warm as the sky on a summer's eve.

Gisbourne made for the stables his hands clutched tight about the sword hanging at his hip, a sword he very much wanted to run that bastard cur through with.

He wanted blood; he wanted it as he'd never wanted anything before.

Hate burned hot in his gut and Gisbourne welcomes her with open arms, better this fever, this smoldering rage, than the mind numbing anguish threatening to consume him alive. Gisbourne sat astride his horse staring with torn eyes upon he castle, how could he have been so blind?

This was exactly the kind of retribution the sheriff enjoyed. Gisbourne didn't dare think to hard upon just how _much_ enjoyment the sheriff had derived from this or he'd never make it past gates.

They were dead men, the lot of them. Walking dead men they were.

Rage still burned hot at coal simmering just beneath the skin, he'd always been cold and clinical when carrying out the sheriffs executions not like this. Not like now.

Now he wanted blood, and screams, and pleads for mercy, he wanted that chance to say no. He'd killed before, but he'd never taken pleasure from it. Gisbourne pictured it in his head, that bastard cur on his knees, begging, pleading like the coward he was, he would beg for his life and Gisbourne would kill him. And he'd like it. The imaginary screams cooled his blood enough for rational thought to catch up with him.

What was he going to do?

"_His men, they'll know how to save him. They've rescued enough men from the castle by now." _Gisbourne sighed remembering, _"They think he's dead." _

He'd just have to make them listen, Gisbourne realized with little relish. It was never easy telling someone that a friend they thought dead was in fact alive, never mind when the truth comes from the man who'd tried to kill them all more than once. .

"_Why do you even care?"_ came the sheriffs' oily snaky voice in his head, a question he knew he'd be faced with by five furious outlaws. It was a good question, one Gisbourne could barely answer.

He just did. Some things just _were_, and this was one of them.

Robin and he had been enemies for so long, and yet the thought of him dead had always sent a twinge of regret racing through him. And when he'd thought Robin was dead that twinge had doubled leaving him feeling like he'd been on a weeklong bender and had his guts ripped open all at once; an unpleasant sensation overall.

And what was his brilliant plan now? Ride into enemy territory and tell the very men that likely blamed him for their leaders death, that he wasn't in fact dead.

"_This is going to be a long day." _


End file.
